By Nicholas Roznovsky
Last year, NIH awarded more than $25 million for projects led by 37 researchers within the department. Four UCSF Psychiatry faculty members placed in the top ten percent and 13 in the top quarter of all psychiatric researchers nationally. Over the most recent five-year period with available data (FY2011-FY2015), UCSF Psychiatry researchers have been awarded a combined $118.7 million in NIH grants and contracts.
NIH funding is one of the key mechanisms for providing financial support for basic, clinical, and translational research within the department. BRI’s figures, however, do not include research awards from other government agencies and non-government institutions, or NIH-awarded projects where department members are contributing to research efforts but are not designated as a primary principal investigator.
BRI's rankings also do not factor in the more than $12 million in funds awarded last year by NIH for research conducted by UCSF Psychiatry faculty members through the Northern California Institute for Research and Education (NCIRE). If NCIRE psychiatric research awards were included in the total, UCSF Psychiatry would move into fourth place overall nationally for NIH funding.
UCSF schools continue to lead nation
Overall, UCSF received more than $560 million in contracts and grants awarded to researchers in its four schools — of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy — and UCSF’s Graduate Division, marking the third year in a row that UCSF’s four schools have topped the nation in federal biomedical research funding in their fields,. In addition, the university as a whole received the most NIH funds of any public university, and second most overall.
“It is a tribute to our world-class faculty that all four of our schools continue to lead their fields in these competitive grants, which are the lifeblood of research at universities nationwide,” said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “These funds empower our faculty, staff, students and trainees to be transformative leaders in their fields, driven by their curiosity to reveal new insights about the fundamental secrets of biology and their passion for applying those basic discoveries to advancing patient care.”
Further coverage
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service. UCSF Psychiatry has an organizational structure that crosses all major UCSF sites - Parnassus, Mission Bay, Laurel Heights, Mt. Zion, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises two top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area.
