BY LOUIE MEIZLISH
Daily News Writer
Published March 21, 2001
The National Institutes of Health announced yesterday its top 10 recipients of research grants, placing the University sixth among higher education institutions.
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The University, whose health system was awarded a five-year $33.6 million grant last week by the NIH, received $260,353,494 in 2000, an increase of 13 percent over 1999.
The grants funded 467 individual research awards.
The news was warmly received by Allen Lichter, dean of the Medical School. The Medical School receives 68 percent of NIH funding to the University, ranking it 10th in the country among medical schools.
"Our steady increase signals the strong condition of our research endeavors as we embark upon the University"s Life Sciences Initiative," Lichter said.
Vice President for Medical Affairs Gil Omenn attributed the University"s position on the list to the faculty at the Medical School.
"It"s all about people the quality of faculty, students, and staff," Omenn said.
"For clinical investigations," he added, "it is a big help for faculty that we have a clinical research center where volunteers and patients can study very effectively."
NIH spokeswoman Anne Thomas said the reason the University has such a prominent position on the NIH list is probably due to the fact that the Medical School is "highly regarded by outside reviewers for scientific merit."
Thomas outlined the process of applying and receiving a grant.
The first stage of the process, known as "peer review," involves the use of nongovernmental experts in the given field scoring the applications based on their evaluations of the merits of the study.
In the next stage, the application is evaluated by the National Advisory Council of the NIH.
For final approval, the application is sent to the director of the particular division that has oversight on the type of grant being evaluated by the NIH, such as the National Eye Institute, which evaluates eye research grants.
Some of the criteria the NIH takes into account are the significance of the study, which Thomas defined as whether "the study addresses a particular problem," and the environment in which the study is to be done.
