Research
September 26, 2011
Research funding at Emory reaches nearly $540M in FY11
Emory researchers received $539.7 million from external funding agencies in fiscal year 2011.
Researchers at Emory University received $539.7 million from external funding agencies in fiscal year 2011, an increase from $535.1 million in fiscal year 2010.
Research funding in Emory's Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC) was $511.5 million, or more than 94 percent of the University total. The WHSC includes schools of medicine, public health, nursing, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Winship Cancer Institute and Emory Healthcare.
About 69 percent of the funds, or $370.7 million, were awarded by federal agencies, led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with $318.8 million. NIH funding represented 86 percent of total federal dollars awarded to Emory and more than 59 percent of all funding received.
Over the past five years, Emory's research funding has increased by more than 52 percent.
"We are extremely proud of our excellent faculty researchers," says President Jim Wagner. "Their pursuit of discoveries that will benefit all of society, and their dedication to training and educating the next generation of scientists and scholars, continues to make Emory a national leader among research universities."
Emory School of Medicine received $348.4 million, or approximately 65 percent of the total dollars awarded. The Yerkes National Primate Research Center received $70.7 million.
School of Medicine funding in the Department of Pediatrics in particular benefited from a new research partnership between Emory and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, the Emory-Children's Pediatric Research Center. Total pediatrics extramural funding, including funding from the Children's Pediatric Research Trust, reached nearly $40 million, an increase of 57 percent from FY10. This included $17 million in pediatrics funding from the NIH, an increase of 10 percent over FY10.
The Rollins School of Public Health received $76 million, an increase of 18 percent over FY10, and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing received $10 million, an increase of 36 percent over last year. Emory College faculty received $24.5 million in funding.
Examples of funded research projects include:
• $26 million in a five-year grant from the NIH to fund the Emory Consortium for AIDS Vaccine Research in Nonhuman Primates, a collaboration among the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), the Emory Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
• $8 million to Emory's Rollins School of Public Health and Georgia Tech from the Environmental Protection Agency to create the Southeastern Center for Air Pollution and Epidemiology, one of four national Clean Air Research Centers focused on the public health impacts of air pollution.
• $4.8 million over five years from the NIH to the Department of Pediatrics and faculty within the Emory-Children's Pediatric Research Center, to study the genetics of Crohn's disease in African Americans.
• $10 million from the National Institutes of Health to Georgia Tech, Emory and PATH, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization, to advance a technology for painless flu vaccine patches containing microneedles that dissolve into the skin.
• $7.6 million from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory and the Medical College of Georgia for a study on the effects of space radiation on cancer.
• $5.4 million to a team of scientists at Emory, Georgia Tech, and Texas Biomedical Research Institute to develop vaccines for prevention of deadly hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola and Marburg virus infections.
• $5 million over five years from the National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke to support a Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease Research. The grant was to researchers at Yerkes Research Center, Emory College, Rollins School of Public Health and Emory School of Medicine.
• $1.1 million from the NSF STEM Talent Expansion Program to the Emory Center for Science Education to increase the number of science and math majors and the number of under-represented minorities with science and math degrees.
• Nearly $1 million to the Department of Pharmacology to drive new drug development for stroke as part of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research.
• $1.8 million over four years to the Center for Science Education from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The grant builds on an existing program to integrate faculty research and quantitative skills into curriculums and to improve science and math education, from kindergarten through college.
• More than $1.2 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund studies in the Departments of Biology and Environmental Studies on host-parasite interactions, modeled on systems of pea aphids and fungus-growing ants, and research to help manage the virulence of parasitic mites in honeybees.
• More than $1.6 million from the NSF and NASA as part of the Emory-Georgia Tech Center for Chemical Evolution, a research and education effort for evolution at a chemical level.
• Nearly $270,000 from the National Institute of Nursing Resources to the School of Nursing for Development of a Diabetes Prevention Program for Young Adults with Increased Risk for Type 2 Diabetes
• $300,000 from NASA to the Department of Chemistry for a study of the raw materials of life in star-forming regions of deep space.
