GW was awarded grants in a variety of fields this fall, furthering its growing presence as a premier research institution committed to transforming policy that affects people in their daily lives.
“In the last year our faculty has been successful in obtaining a significant number of large grants in a variety of disciplines, which I believe bodes well for the future of the research enterprise at GW,” says Leo Chalupa, vice president for research. “The Office of the Vice President is spearheading a number of campus-wide initiatives around themes where GW is likely to reach pre-eminence, such as computational biology, global women’s issues, autism, sustainability, neglected tropical disease, science policy, as well as cancer research.”
The National Institutes of Health awarded a $20 million grant to the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, a partnership of Children’s National Medical Center and GW. The institute, which translates research from the laboratory into treatment that can be applied at a patient’s bedside, was created in 2008. The institute focuses its research on childhood diseases, including diseases that persist into adulthood and worsen or develop with age.
This fall, the GW Cancer Institute also received a $2.4 million grant from the D.C. Cancer Consortium to establish and coordinate the City-wide Patient Navigation Network (CPNN), which will create a framework for cancer care coordination across the city.
The goal of CPNN is to assist all D.C. residents who require care in accessing appropriate screening services and treatment, regardless of their ability to pay. In addition, CPNN will help patients identify appropriate support services, including post treatment, in particular for those populations currently experiencing disparities in cancer care.
GW’s Office of Cancer Survivorship, in collaboration with the American Cancer Society, won a $4.25 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to host the CDC’s National Cancer Survivorship Resource Center. The center’s purpose is to assess and address the critical needs of the 12 million cancer survivors in the U.S. today.
And in October, the federal government announced a $130 million, five-year program, called the Medical Education Partnership Initiative, to enhance medical education in sub-Saharan Africa and boost the number of health care workers there. The GW Medical Center was selected to serve as the coordinating hub of the initiative. The program, which is funded through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the National Institutes of Health, will build a network of partnerships between African institutions in a dozen countries and U.S. medical schools and universities.
GW received $12.5 million from the government to establish a coordinating center that will evaluate the progress of these programs, help provide expertise and facilitate communication between the institutions through data collection and annual site visits.
In addition to science and medical-related grants, GW has received several grants that will further education research and international education.
GW’s School of Engineering and Applied Science received a $1 million gift to fund a student exchange program with Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. Anna H. Lee and Simon S. Lee, M.S. ’05, created the endowment to build a bridge between the two schools. Before immigrating to the U.S. in 1979, Mr. Lee received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Korea University. More than 25 years later, he received a master of science in systems engineering from GW.
In October, GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to initiate an “Innovation for Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers” project, which will train a minimum of 32 GW students to enter the field of early childhood special education and research. The project will use research-based practices to increase new teacher job satisfaction, efficacy and retention in special needs education and explore the interplay of brain development, function and neurodevelopmental disabilities – factors most apparent in the growing rate of autism diagnosed in young children up to 5 years old. The project will also train GSEHD students to serve young children with special needs.
And less than a month later, the Department of Education recognized GSEHD again by awarding its Department of Special Education and Disability Studies and its Department of Counseling and Human Development $3.7 million to support bilingual special education training for D.C. public school educators and tuition costs for students in rehabilitation counseling and job development programs.
“Attaining preeminence in research in all campus disciplines, from humanities to biomedicine to engineering, is a key factor in being a world class institution and attracting the best and brightest students and faculty,” says Dr. Chalupa. “We are well underway to attaining this objective.”