UMass Medical School ranks 36th in National Institutes of Health funding among 141 U.S. medical schools, according to the 2013 report from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, placing it in the top quartile for the first time.
“The successive setbacks of sequestration and the government shutdown have posed a tremendous difficulty for UMMS investigators, but they continue to hold their own in competing for national funding to sustain their groundbreaking efforts. This ranking clearly demonstrates that,” said Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education, executive deputy chancellor, provost, dean of the School of Medicine and professor of pediatrics.
A nonprofit medical research institute, Blue Ridge explores the interfaces of fundamental biological science, clinical science and clinical care with a special emphasis on targeted cancer therapy. Each year the institute tabulates and ranks, by medical school department, NIH awards obtained from the publicly available Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT) from the National Institutes of Health website.
According to the Blue Ridge Institute report, UMMS received more than $117 million in NIH funding between Oct. 1, 2012, and Sept. 30, 2013, placing it among the top public medical schools in the Northeast. In particular, UMMS placed highly in basic science research funding, ranking 12th in genetics and 17th in biochemistry with a combined $20 million from the NIH in 2013. The clinical departments emergency medicine and family medicine & community medicine ranked 1st and 18th respectively in NIH funding. Meanwhile, the school’s Department of Medicine totaled $31 million in NIH awards.
