The University of Maryland, Baltimore Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) recently received a grant of $15.2 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to establish a new research center. This 5 year award will be used to establish the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Diseases.
The new center will be led by an interdisciplinary team of University of Maryland, Baltimore researchers from the Institute of Genome Sciences, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Center for Vaccine Development who will study pathogens and their hosts using different genomic techniques to gain a better understanding of how pathogens cause harm. In the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Diseases, researchers will be able to study pathogen biology, virulence, drug resistance, immune invasion, and host-microbiome interactions using different genomics and bioinformatics approaches. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia).
Director of the Institute of Genome Sciences, Clare Fraser, PhD, explained that "this team has been in the forefront of applying genomic techniques to advance scientific understanding of infectious disease agents, and the NIAID grant will catalyze further development of genomics approaches within global infectious disease communities."
Funding from this $15.2 million NIAID grant will be used to create 4 new research cores within the new center as well as 4 main research programs. The new cores that will be created are:
- Technology Core
- Data Management Core
- Immunology Core
- Administrative core
The 3 main research programs in the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Disease will focus on:
- Host/bacterial pathogens and microbiome.
- Genomic analysis of fungal pathogenesis.
- Integrated genomics research in parasitic tropical diseases.
Night skyline of Baltimore, Maryland (Image courtesy of Wikimedia)
The University of Maryland, Baltimore is a highly funded public research institution making great progress in the fields of life science. Each year, millions of dollars are awarded from the NIH, NSF, and other public and private institutions to help fund research. In the 2014 fiscal year, the departments at UMD Baltimore that received the most funding from the NIH were:
- Internal Medicine - $39,263,255, 71 awards
- Microbiology/Immunology/Virology - $12,119,122, 25 awards
- Public Health and Preventative Medicine - $10,433,480, 18 awards
- Physiology - $8,803,233, 26 awards
- Pharmacology - $7,240,646, 26 awards
- Biochemistry - $7,138,489, 25 awards
The University of Maryland is also in the process of building a $200 million Proton Therapy Cancer Treatment Center and a $305.4 million new research building for the School of Medicine, both at the Baltimore campus.
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