Grants to UCI top $235 million
Deirdre Newman
Funding for research and educational programs this school year
surpassed the stellar amount UC Irvine received the previous year and
has grown 20% in the past three years.
The researchers received $235.6 million in 2002-03, compared to
$212 million in 2001-02 and $192 million in 2000-01.
William Parker, vice chancellor for research, attributes the
growth to the high caliber of professors and other researchers on
campus.
“Anytime you expand the visibility and capabilities of research
programs, it attracts the interest of faculty, attracts the interest
of prospective grad students and potential visitors who may chose to
come to the campus for a year,” Parker said.
The highest percentage of funding went to the life sciences, where
researchers were awarded $154 million. This year’s total also
includes a record 27 grants of more than $1 million, supporting
diverse programs from undergraduate student research to the
development of potential cures for Alzheimer’s disease and spinal
cord injury.
One of the major recipients was Ronald Stern, dean of the School
of Physical Sciences, who received $5.4 million in initial funding
from the National Science Foundation to develop FOCUS, an innovative
math and science education program that will serve more than 100,000
Southern California high school students. The funding is part of a
five-year, $14.2-million grant -- the largest National Science
Foundation grant ever received by UCI.
One of the programs the funding will be spent on is the Teacher
Leadership Cadre, where math and science teachers from more than 100
schools in Santa Ana, Compton and the Westside of Costa Mesa will be
brought up to date in their respective subjects.
“Our hope is these leaders will go in [to the program] and for the
next four years, if you spend almost an hour a week, you can cover a
lot of things in cooperation and in partnership with the principals
and the teachers and the university faculty to really bring them up
to a higher level of content and pedagogy,” said Everly Fleischer,
FOCUS director.
The Reeve-Irvine Research Center, which works on treatments and
cures for those afflicted with spinal cord injuries, received two
contracts for a total of $2.6 million. The funding will enable the
center to help the field as a whole expedite the time it takes to get
treatments to clinical trial.
By replicating studies done by other researchers, the center will
make the discoveries more convincing, which is imperative for the
Food and Drug Administration approval process and for getting to
clinical trial, said Maura Hofstadter, director of education. The
center will also work to develop more measures of a treatment’s
success aside from regaining locomotion, which is the primary one
studied, Hofstadter said.
Other major funding beneficiaries are:
* Dr. Steven Potkin, professor of psychiatry, who received $4.3
million in National Institute of Health funding to establish the
Biomedical Informatics Research Network, a nationwide network for
sharing vast amounts of computerized brain imaging data about
schizophrenia. This project is part of a three-year, $10.9-million
program funded by the federal government to speed development of new
treatments for this disabling illness.
* Henry Sobel, professor of physics and astronomy, who received
$3.4 million in Department of Energy funding to study neutrinos and
other elementary particles.
* Dr. Frank Meyskens Jr., director of the Chao Family
Comprehensive Cancer Center, who received $2.2 million from the NIH
to run a clinical trial on anti-cancer drugs.
* Satya Atluri, the Samueli/Von Karman Professor of Aerospace
Engineering, who received $1.7 million from the Federal Aviation
Administration to develop a wireless screening system to improve
airport security.
* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa and may be reached at (949)
574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.
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