Vanderbilt Recovery Act tally: $74M

Grants represent 45 percent of Recovery Act funds from NIH, NSF

Email | Print By Erin Lawley

Researchers at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have received more than $74 million in funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as of Sept. 30, the university announced today.

The act, which was signed into law in February, committed $787 billion in federal funds to stimulate the research economy – 2.5 percent of which was slated for scientific and medical research.

Of the 180 grants received by Vanderbilt, 165 were awarded by the National Institutes of Health and 14 were from the National Science Foundation – representing 45 percent of the grants awarded by the NIH and NSF to research universities, medical centers, and companies. The remaining grant came from Health and Human Services.

“We are a very large research institution in terms of being one of the top 10 in the country for NIH funding,” said Susan Wente, associate vice chancellor for research at VUMC. The medical center ranked 10th in the country for NIH funding in 2007. Wente said about 80 percent of the complex’s roughly $423 million in research grants comes from the NIH.

In terms of the breadth of research, Wente said: “It’s hard to pick an area we’re not making discoveries in.”

Two-thirds of the grants awarded through the Recovery Act are supporting existing research. Some of the projects funded by the Recovery Act include:

• $1.1 million to use computer simulation to study how black holes form and grow and partner with Fisk University to encourage minorities and women to pursue careers in physics and other sciences.

• $556,000 to continue an 11-year-old study looking at the relationship between electrical and metabolic effects that happen when the heart’s rhythm becomes disturbed or abnormal.

• $3.9 million to buy an ultra-high field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer for analyzing complex protein structures.

•  $923,000 to develop a way to integrate genetic data with public databases to help extract more meaningful information.

• $347,500 to study the origins of large volcanic eruptions, like Mount St. Helens.