Emory received a total of $572.4 million in research funding this fiscal year – the largest amount in the history of Emory’s external funding.
“These numbers are truly heartening and impressive,” said David Stephens, vice president for research in Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center and chair of the Department of Medicine at Emory School of Medicine, in a Sept. 24th Emory press release.
This fiscal year’s funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and federal funding is almost a 10 percent increase from last year’s $521.8 million funding and marks the sixth consecutive year that funding has surpassed $500 million, according to the press release. Fiscal years are counted from September of the previous year to September of the current year.
Woodruff Health Sciences Center, which includes the School of Medicine, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Rollins School of Public Health, Winship Cancer Institute and Yerkes National Primate Research Center, received almost 94 percent of the funds with more $537 million.
The NIH gave the largest chunk of money, constituting 66 percent of the total with $300 million in funds. Federal agencies followed NIH with around $375 million.
While the NIH budget has remained flat, Emory researchers have been able to maintain the same level of funding as well as attract new supporters from other government and non-government sources, Stephens said.
The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, which compares the NIH funding of various institutions, ranked Emory 18th last year, but has not released the rankings for this year.
The School of Medicine received nearly $363 million; the Rollins School of Public Health received $90 million, Yerkes National Primate Research Center received $66.6 million, and Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing received $14.3 million.
Other schools also received funding: Emory College, Laney Graduate School, Candler School of Theology, Goizueta Business School, Emory Law School and Oxford College.
Out of 10 total campus projects, three received the most funding. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $72 million over three years to the Emory Global Health Institute to establish the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network, according to a Sept. 25 Atlanta Business Chronicle article.
The NIH will fund one of four national Tuberculosis Research Units under the School of Medicine with $18.7 million over seven years. Also, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will contribute $10.8 million over three years to the School of Medicine and the Emory Vaccine Center to create a national team that will develop improved therapeutics and vaccines for strains of the Ebola virus.
