Columbia University researchers received nearly $344 million in NIH funding in fiscal year 2007, more than any other academic medical center in New York State, according to recently released data from the NIH. This figure includes grants given to Columbia’s health sciences faculty (about $292 million), its Department of Psychiatry faculty at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (about $50 million), faculty at Columbia’s Morningside campus (about $45 million), many of whom have appointments at the medical center, and to Columbia faculty at affiliated institutions such as St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center and its Institute for Health Sciences (about $10 million).
The College of Dental Medicine has received a $1 million grant from the New York State Health Care Initiatives Pool to support its offsite patient care programs, including expansion of the dental facility within the Edward W. Stitt School, and to purchase a new mobile dental van to take oral health care services to the children of Northern Manhattan.
Domenico Accili, MD, professor of medicine-endocrinology, has been granted a five-year $6.5 million competitive funding renewal by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive & Kidney Diseases for the Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center that he directs. This center, in conjunction with the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, integrates basic and translational diabetes research with institutional centers of excellence in obesity, atherosclerosis, and cardiovascular biology research
Wesley Grueber, PhD, assistant professor of physiology & cellular biophysics, has been awarded $1.7 million over five years by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Dr. Grueber will study how dendrites, the branched projections of a neuron that are the major sites of information input in neural circuits, take cues from their extracellular environment during development to ensure accurate wiring of the nervous system.
Ann Marie Schmidt, MD, the Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor of Surgical Sciences (in Surgery), has been awarded a five-year $8 million program project grant by the National Institute on Aging to examine the role of the aging process in risk for ischemia. A particular focus of these studies is the role of RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation endproducts) and the polyol pathway, a mechanism implicated in a number of diabetic complications, aging, and cardiovascular injury in aging.