Keck School of Medicine of USC Wins $34 Million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Funds

October 21, 2009

Faculty researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have won a total of $34 million in grants as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

ARRA, which was passed by Congress and signed into law in February 2009 by President Obama, is designed to fund research projects that will stimulate the economy and create or retain jobs while potentially making significant scientific progress over the next two years.

On National Medical Research Day, Keck School of Medicine leaders noted that the ARRA awards represent a surge of federal support for the school.

“Competition for these grants was intense, so the success of our faculty speaks to the quality of our scientific enterprise and the determination of our investigators,” said Keck School Dean Carmen A. Puliafito, M.D., M.B.A. “Today—which is National Medical Research Day—I’m proud to recognize their tireless efforts and stellar accomplishments.”

Among the grants is a nearly $9 million Grand Opportunity grant awarded to two USC neuroscientists to map how genes are expressed in different regions of the human brain throughout development. The project will be done in collaboration with researchers at Yale University and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Wash.

Keck School of Medicine researchers have also been awarded four ARRA P30 grants—one shared with the USC School of Dentistry—totaling $4.5 million to support junior faculty recruitment in the areas of autism, cancer, lung disease and craniofacial biology.
 
Elizabeth Fini, vice dean for research at the Keck School, said she expects the $34 million to increase as additional ARRA grant applications are funded.

“These ARRA grant awards are a symbol of who we are and what we represent to our peers in the national research community,” she said. “They are due to the creative ideas and exceptional skills of our longstanding faculty researchers, as well as junior faculty and new chairs and research leaders we’ve recently recruited.”

For more information on ARRA grant awards to the Keck School of Medicine of USC, go to http://www.usc.edu/keck.