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Johns Hopkins investigators receive research funding from a diverse range of sponsors for projects in nearly every imaginable field of inquiry or utility, some building on existing strengths and others going in extraordinary new directions. Sponsors include federal and state govern-ment, private foundations, and even generous individuals whose confidence in the Hopkins faculty inspires them to underwrite the discoveries that will provide the foundation for the education of future generations and cure the diseases that plague humanity. In many cases, research methods have moved beyond the traditional disciplinary framework and literally made the world their laboratory. Research centers “without walls” is one such exciting concept that is producing excellent results. The Center for ALS Research includes more than 30 Hopkins scientists from multiple departments as well as some of the best ALS researchers from other top institutions. Led by Hopkins neuroscientists, they are studying the neurodegenerative disorder known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The Kornfeld Foundation of New York has pledged $4 million over five years to the center and the Robert Packard Foundation has contributed $730,000 this year, and has committed a minimum of 50% of the funds it raises in the future for the center. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has awarded to the School of Medicine a $4.6 million grant over five years, for another such multidisciplinary team to study ADPKD, a systemic disorder involving multiple organs, including the brain, heart, and kidneys. Research partnerships have been more productive than laboratories operating alone. Hopkins Medicine, whose presence is felt in every corner of the globe, continues to reach out. Hopkins and West Virginia University have signed a collaborative partnership agreement with the Rockefeller Institute to develop an international medical research center focused on fundamental cognitive neuroscience and the development of new drugs and diagnostics for diagnosis and treatment of neurological and cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. The $80 million center, the only major institute in the world focusing on human memory, has been named the Blanchette Rockefeller Neuro-sciences Institute, after Senator John D. Rockefeller's mother, who died in 1992 fol-lowing a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's. Headquartered on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, with research also conducted at Hopkins' Montgomery County Campus, the institute will further benefit from an exchange of researchers, faculty, and students, involving University-wide partici-pation as well as collaboration with partners in Asia and Europe. In an ongoing partnership between the School of Medicine, the Applied Physics Laboratory, Surgivision Inc., Robin Medical Inc., and Bard Electrophysiology Inc., cardiologists and other scientists will be able to more accurately correlate anatomical and electrical information for improved diag- nosis and therapy of heart arrhythmias. A $3.6 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies will allow these researchers to develop imaging technologies that will also guide interventional procedures in the heart in general, as well as in other organ systems. A five-year $7.5 million research grant from the National Institute of Dental and Cranio-facial Research (NIDCR), a division of NIH, has funded a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional center with collaborative ties to universities, research institutions, hospitals, and patient support groups in 14 states and seven countries. The NIDCR selected the Johns Hopkins Center for Cranio-facial Development and Disorders as one of six Comprehensive Oral Health Research Centers of Discovery. Led by Hopkins pediatrics researchers, investigators will study all aspects of cranio-facial disorders, such as oral clefting, including their psychosocial effects. Researchers in the School of Public Health became part of the Center for Disease Control's Prevention Research Initiative, a $12.5 million partnering approach that connects university-based scientists with the resources of health departments, community-based programs, and national organizations. Investigators in Health Policy and Manage-ment received two grants from this program for work on child safety. The National Science Foundation's Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Program aims to harness the rapid growth in computer power and connectivity and transform them into ways to manage the huge volumes of information that such advances generate. A Hopkins-led collaboration that includes scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Department of Energy's Fermilab and Microsoft is using a $2.5 million grant from this program to develop better ways of classifying, accessing, and storing infor-mation, as well as improving software used by search engines. An innovative partnership of environmental scientists from Hopkins and mathematicians from Princeton is influencing both science and environmental policy. This team has been recognized with the maximum $1 million award from a new initiative of the David and Lucile Packard FoundationÑthe Packard Interdisciplinary Science Program. They are setting new standards for interactions between the mathematical sciences and biological sciences in their quest to achieve more cost- and species-efficient designs of nature reserves. School partnerships involving Hopkins expertise are an invaluable investment in the future of our children and a special opportunity for Hopkins researchers to help guide their future. The Center on School, Family and Community Partnerships was awarded $500,000 by the Disney Learning Partnership, a philanthropic initiative of the Walt Disney Company as part of its National Network of Partnership Schools. This support will bring Hopkins leadership to this program, which uses research-based strategies to help schools at the local, district, and state levels to organize, implement, and evaluate programs of family and community involvement. The National Science Foundation awarded a $450,000 grant to sponsor the JHU School of Medicine-Dunbar High School Graduate Teaching Fellows Program. In a program that educates both students and teachers, selected Hopkins doctoral candidates are matched with Dunbar teachers and serve as educational resources while acquiring practical and theoretical classroom skills. Dunbar is Baltimore's first magnet school for the health professions. From a vision toward research training as a problem-centered approach, a new paradigm for research and graduate education has emerged. In a partnership drawing on a broad range of research methods derived from a diverse set of traditional disciplines, such as cognitive science, the mathematical sciences, psychology, and neuroscience, Hopkins researchers are focusing on human language with a $2.6 million grant over two years from the National Science Foundation. This approach integrates formal and empirical methods in basic research on language that has long-term implications for diagnosis and treatment of language-related neurological and learning disorders, for literacy and language education, and for digital language technologies. The Applied Physics Laboratory, in partnership with the Schools of Engineering, Medicine and Public Health, The University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and the National Study Center for Trauma and Emergency Medical Service, is engaging its mechanical and biomechanical expertise in the development of an on-campus Transportation Safety and Biomechanics Research Center. As part of a five-year $2.7 million contract with the National Highway Traffic Safety Admin-istration (NHTSA), the center's researchers will help to gain a better understanding of injury-causing mechanisms in highway vehicle crashes. In addition to the many successful research collaborations, individual efforts are also rewarded. This year, three assistant professors in the Schools of Engineering and Medicine were among the 60 researchers nationwide named as recipients of Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. These awards, established in 1996, are the highest honor conferred by the United States Government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. Each investigator will receive funds of approximately $250,000 per year over the next five years to continue the work that exemplifies the critical mission of their sponsoring agencies. As one of its largest research grants ever, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies received a three-year grant worth $405,000 from the Daimler-Chrysler Foundation in Essen, Germany, for funding of a senior fellowship program. Two Fellows, an American and a German, will be invited each year to study at the Institute in Washington. This year the Fellows are conducting an in-depth examination of what a post-Kosovo Europe holds for German and American interests. Building upon the spectacular successes of the recent past, space research at both the Applied Physics Laboratory and the School of Arts and Sciences continues to thrive. This year, supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA, APL launched its Flare Genesis telescope to study solar phenomena. Launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, this $18 million instrument, one of the largest solar telescopes in the world, will circle the South Pole, sending back to Earth the sharpest images ever of sunspots and magnetically active regions on the sun's surface. The messenger (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft, an APL-managed mission to Mercury, was selected by NASA as one of two new Discovery Program missions. This $286 million mission, the first spacecraft to visit the planet in more than three decades, is scheduled for launch in 2004. In the School of Arts and Sciences, the FUSE spacecraft, launched last summer from Cape Canaveral, has begun its next phase, a three-year mission to trace the fossil records of the origins of the universe funded by $12.8 million from NASA. Research funds are sometimes obtained from the most unlikely or unusual sources. This year the Johns Hopkins Institutions have been allotted $13.75 million for fiscal year 2001 as their share of the national tobacco settlement funds for research, education, and facilities construction. Of these funds, $3.75 million is ear-marked for cancer research, treatment, and education and $10 million for research facilities at the Schools of Medicine and Public Health. In subsequent years, the annual appropriation to Hopkins institutions for cancer research is expected to rise to at least $5 million. The international reputation of investigators in the Department of Biology has attracted the support of personal philanthropy. A Singaporean businessman has made a multi-million dollar commitment of investment in a groundbreaking new start-up company that will develop a group of naturally occurring compounds isolated from creosote bushes that have shown some early signs of promise as cancer treatments. Also, drawn by earlier groundbreaking work on vitamin A in the School of Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made its third grant to Hopkins in as many years. The Gates Foundation has increased by $20 million Public Health's efforts to determine what other micronutrients should be used in combination with vitamin A to achieve the maximum protective effect on the health of children and expectant mothers. Medical research, which has positioned Hopkins as the primary recipient of research funds from the National Institutes of Health for more than a decade, has continued to grow. Hopkins neuroscientists have received $5.8 million from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study the neural mechanisms of perception. They are learning how human beings organize and process tactile and visual information both perceptually and physiologically. The same agency is also funding a $5.7 million interdisciplinary project led by Hopkins neurologists. These investigators are using state-of-the-art molecular, neuropathological, physiological, and neurobehavioral approaches to conduct interactive studies of neuronal injury and mechanisms to limit injury in the nervous system. A related goal, the discovery of genes that may be neuroprotective, is also being pursued. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Researchers in Otolaryngology and Oncology have received grants of $4.7 million from the National Cancer Institute. Through an integrated approach of sharing research subjects, tissue samples, resources, technical expertise, and data analysis strategies, their studies aim to use the power of molecular biology to develop and test new molecular markers for the early detection of non-small cell lung cancer and to facilitate the rapid transfer of novel technologies from the laboratory into the clinical arena. |
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Expanded
student aid and expanded facilities are being celebrated at the
School of Public Health, where Initiative gifts have boosted scholarship
support by $10 million and have helped build three additions that provide
critical space for laboratories, classrooms, and an extensive distance
learning program. The School's unrestricted endowment has also
been substantially increased during the campaign, and both the department
and the directorship have been endowed in the Feinstone Department
of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Other important initiatives
include the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and
Reproductive Health and new or expanded programs in quantitative genetics,
infectious diseases, nutrition, cancer prevention, global environmental
health, and children's health worldwide.
ENGINEERING The success of the campaign at the Whiting School of Engineering has significantly advanced the School's goal of technological leadership and has contributed to the reestablished, 20-year-old School's stunning progress toward the top tier of U.S. engineering schools. Renovations, including those to Krieger, Maryland, and Barton Halls, have vastly improved laboratory space and are key to teaching and research. The addition of Clark Hall (pictured at the top of the page) to house the Whitaker Biomedical Engineering InstituteÑboth supplied by Initiative giftsÑwill provide modern facilities for the country's No. 1 program in biomedical engineering. New endowment for professorships, for undergraduate and graduate student financial aid, and for innovations such as the W. P. Carey Programs in Entrepreneurship and Management have resulted in a tripling of the School's endowment.
STUDENT LIFE
SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES IN BUSINESS AND EDUCATION Both
facilities and programs at the School of Professional Studies in Business
and Education (SPSBE) have been enhanced by the Initiative. Expanded
and updated space is already accommodating students at the Montgomery
County Campus, and SPSBE is poised to open its impressive new Downtown
Center in Baltimore in January 2001. Campaign gifts have also allowed
the School to initiate programs
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Student
life at Homewood has been given a tremendous shot in the arm through
commitments to the Johns Hopkins Initiative. Greatly enhanced opportunities
for creative expression, physical fitness, and spiritual growth
will be provided by the student arts and recreation centers, to open
in 2001, and the Bunting Meyerhoff Interfaith and Community Service
Center, dedicated in 1999. Also under way is the beautification
of pedestrian areas and open spaces. Meanwhile, record numbers of undergraduate
applicants to the Krieger and Whiting Schools were attracted, in large
part, by an infusion of student aid funds from Michael Bloomberg and
many other donors who responded to the Bloomberg Challenge and
to the campaign's emphasis on scholarships and fellowships. Admission
selectivity for freshmen entering in 1999 was the highest since Hopkins
started keeping records in the 1950s.
