UTMB, a member of the Texas Medical Center, offers a breadth of research centers and institutes that foster research innovation, including in the fields of vaccine development, tropical diseases, biodefense and emerging infectious diseases, aging, women's health, translational sciences, structural biology, brain health, artificial intelligence, addiction sciences and therapeutics, environmental health and medicine, metabolic disorders, drug discovery, microbiome research with well-designed germ-free facility, and active collaborations with Shriners Children's Texas. Its state-of-the-art core facilities include one of two NIH-funded national biocontainment laboratories (Galveston National Laboratory) with excellent infrastructure to conduct research at BSL2, -3 and -4 levels using diverse animal models of infectious diseases, as well as arthropod containment facilities to study the transmission of vector-borne diseases.