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.