The New York Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research recently awarded UB a Faculty Development Award, and will donate $750,000 to the university toward fostering research to discover new drugs.
According to Kenneth Tramposch, associate vice president for research, the award is a benefit to the university because it will help make UB more attractive to top-notch researchers.
"The award is used to help attract new faculty to UB, especially from out of New York State, but it is also used to help retain the faculty that we have," said Tramposch.
NYSTAR's mission, as stated on the office's Web site, is to "attract the best and brightest faculty from throughout the world to New York's Academic Research Centers and to provide additional support to leading researchers already residing in our state's institutions of higher learning."
According to Wayne Anderson, dean of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the awarded money will be used to fund a collaboration between the School of Pharmacy, UB's Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, the School of Medicine and Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
"The research involves genomics, proteomics (concepts that deal with understanding the human genome), drug delivery, as well as the discovery of new drug targets," said Anderson.
Anderson said he believes the money will provide new opportunities for the roughly 24 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students in the School of Pharmacy.
"This research provides a broader set of opportunities for students," he said. "In the real world, there are many collaborations between people from different fields of expertise. Ultimately, this will increase the capabilities and interactions both at the graduate and the undergraduate level."
In addition, Tramposch said UB recently hired a number of biostatisticians and this award money will provide them with the ability to hire greater amounts of "man power" to assist in research projects.
Tramposch said the award would enable new faculty members to conduct research right away, as opposed to the usual waiting period of a year or more to receive federal grants, which require "preliminary data" or initial research before approval for project funding.
"(The award from NYSTAR) gets (new researchers) off to a really fast start," Tramposch said.
Although the $750,000 is not enough money to fund all of the new research programs in their entirety, Tramposch said the money would help sustain the programs until faculty can receive federal grants.
"By the time the money runs out, it will be picked up by grants that the faculty member has applied for," he said.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
