WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Total outside support for Wake Forest University Health Sciences (WFUHS) – mostly for research – increased by nearly $1 million, reaching a total of $189,830,035 for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2006.
The increase came despite a tightening federal budget, which saw support from the federal government decline from $152.3 million to $149.4 million.
WFUHS has one of the most productive faculties in the country and the decline here was due to the departure of several highly funded investigators, according to Sally A. Shumaker, Ph.D., associate dean for research.
Figures showed the average support for each basic science faculty member was $445,000 in fiscal 2005. The average amount of grant support for WFUHS basic science faculty was substantially above national averages for both private medical schools and all medical schools, public and private.
The overall totals include grants and contracts for research, research training, fellowships and faculty development awards, as well as demonstration and service awards to improve the training of medical students and residents and to provide medical care and outreach.
The federal government remained the major source of outside funding at WFUHS, accounting for 78.7 percent of the total, but funding from industry rose from $16.8 million to $18.9 million, and accounted for 10 percent. Support from foundations and voluntary health agencies increased from $9.9 million to $11.4 million, 6 percent of the total. Support from the State of North Carolina stayed flat at $10 million.
The Division of Public Health Sciences received $52.2 million, a substantial increase from the $44.6 million in the 2005 fiscal year, and the largest programmatic component of outside funding at WFUHS.
The Division of Surgical Sciences increased from $8.3 million to $11.8 million. Within that total was an increase from $1.4 million to $5.1 million in the Department of Urology, reflecting largely the activities of Anthony Atala, M.D., and his co-investigators. Atala is both the chair of the department and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Separately, funding for other institute staff members increased from about $500,000 million to $1.7 million.
The Department of Biochemistry increased from $7.8 million to $8.5 million, Microbiology and Immunology from $5.7 to $6.2 million, and Pathology from $9.5 to $9.8 million.
“WFUHS maintains a thriving research enterprise in spite of the flat and even declining dollars available through the National Institutes of Health,” said Shumaker. “We continue to be impressed by the initiative, creativity and hard work of our research faculty.”
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Media Contacts: Robert Conn, rconn@wfubmc.edu, Shannon Koontz, shkoontz@wfubmc.edu, or Karen Richardson, krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu, at (336) 716-4587.
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine and its other related enterprises including the Piedmont Triad Research Park. The Medical School is ranked 4th in the Southeastern United States in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.