UC Davis sees increase in national research funding

In a trend that continues to show impressive improvement each year, the UC Davis School of Medicine has again jumped up the federal funding ladder among the nation’s medical schools, according to data just released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With its wide range of health-related studies and programs, UC Davis received nearly $87 million in NIH research-related grant awards during the 2005 fiscal year, ranking it 44th out of 123 medical schools across the country. Last year, the medical school ranked 51st in terms of total grants, receiving approximately $77 million in NIH funding.

Each year, NIH releases information about its extramural research awards to medical schools. The data includes financial summaries for research grants, training grants, fellowships, research and development contracts, and more.

The latest figures show that the UC Davis School of Medicine received a total of 242 grant awards, 14 more than the previous year. Of those awards, 225 were research grants totaling $82,494,382. The school also received five NIH training grants worth $1,385,319, and funding for 8 fellowships totaling $361,319. It received two other awards for $785,000, and two research and development contracts worth $1,859,776.

Among areas at UC Davis that saw significant increases in NIH funding was the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, where researchers are using state-of-the-art technologies in genomics, proteomics and imaging to help identify novel targets for infectious disease prevention and therapies to treat immunologic disorders.

Another department that had impressive gains in NIH funding was medical pharmacology, which is in the midst of an expanding program as part of the university’s emphasis on basic biomedical sciences. Pharmacology researchers are currently working on studies that could help explain both the effectiveness of certain therapies and the causes of illnesses ranging from cancer and epilepsy to heart disease.

Rounding out School of Medicine departments that experienced significant increases in federal research funding during the past year were pediatrics, surgery and the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Hematology and Oncology.

Several years ago, UC Davis Health System set a strategic goal of increasing its school of medicine’s NIH rankings for research funding by 10 slots within five years and reaching the top quartile within a decade. In the past year alone, UC Davis School of Medicine leaped six places up the national chart.

As in previous years, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine garnered the most NIH funding awards, although its $449 million in total funding remained the same as it was in 2004.