JHU Financial Report 1995
Research

The last few years have brought about major changes in the academic research community. The federal government has shifted priorities, cut programs, and become increasingly selective in its funding of research projects. Other funding sources have followed suit, leaving research universities to confront the fact that revenues simply are not adequate to achieve the full potential of university-based research. Although deeply affected by the uncertainties of the times, Johns Hopkins researchers have weathered the changes by building upon their extraordinary record of accomplishment and innovation.

The University's research revenues grew 7% in 1995 -- nearly 9% in its academic divisions -- remarkable in a time when federal research budgets are essentially flat. Research funding for the year exceeded $900 million, with the academic divisions receiving $490 million and the Applied Physics Laboratory $415 million. Hopkins health divisions continued to hold their unique position in funded research. The School of Medicine, for the fourth year in a row, was the largest recipient of federal awards; and the School of Public Health continued to outpace other such schools in receipt of research dollars. The other academic divisions, with programs in arts, sciences, humanities, and engineering, also posted increased research revenues in 1995.

Hopkins' success is, in many ways, attributable to keeping pace with changing national priorities while maintaining excellence in core areas of academic scholarship. Despite budget trends that make obtaining research grants more competitive than ever, the Hopkins faculty have done well by anticipating trends and adapting to them. For example, many federal agencies now are tying research awards to educational goals, particularly undergraduate education, that will prepare today's young people for the jobs of the future. Hopkins has always had a tradition of student research, and many awards this year have strengthened our ability to train undergraduates. Agencies also are reiterating a preference for funding research proposals that give evidence of solid preliminary results. Hopkins recognized this early and began programs of awarding "seed" money for promising new projects to increase their likelihood of receiving external funding later. The size of an individual research grant is no longer necessarily an indicator of success. The fact that multiple sources are willing to provide partial funding for a research project is often more important for a project's viability. These and other trends are apparent in this year's funding successes. To cite a few examples:

The Whiting School of Engineering's Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering received $310,500 from the National Science Foundation in support of a combined research-curriculum development project to train students in an interactive environment.

The Department of Chemical Engineering received nearly $600,000 to support projects designed by doctoral students that focus on pollution prevention and waste minimization in chemical processing. This program will simulate an industrial environment in an academic setting. It will be a model of cooperative education in which the doctoral students will serve as consultants and mentors to undergraduate students in the chemical engineering process.

To get the most from research in which both are interested, NASA and the National Science Foundation have provided $1 million to researchers from Engineering, Medicine, and Biophysics working together on the creation and efficacy of biocompatible polymers as drug delivery systems that will target a specific area of the body at a controlled rate without affecting the other healthy parts.

In the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the launch of the immensely successful Astro-2 mission from the space shuttle Endeavour in February kept Hopkins astrophysicists busy all year. Improvements to the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) enabled scientists to gather richer and more abundant data than they did with Astro-1 and produced several firsts in astronomy, including deploying HUT and the Hubble Space Telescope simultaneously to observe Jupiter and the first proof of the existence of an intergalactic medium.

Space research also brought Hopkins into the federal government's fiscal reengineering process. NASA accepted a restructured proposal for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) that reduces the project's cost from its original $254 million to $100 million and speeds up the mission s timetable by two years. All science planning and satellite operations will be done from a control center in Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy. Hopkins is leading a project team that includes the University of Colorado, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Canadian and French space agencies.

Finally in space research, the National Science Foundation added $5 million to the original funding of $8 million from the Sloan Foundation to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is mapping half of the vast northern sky. Managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium made up of scientists from Hopkins and other institutions in the United States and Japan, the project will also pair Hopkins physicists and computer scientists to build software that will make information available to other scientists.

Researchers in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences also have won substantial awards for programs in education and research. Latin American studies is one of the fastest growing academic fields, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Hopkins $500,000 to identify and train some of the very best Latin American scholars for the next century. A $1.8 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will give research experience to Hopkins undergraduates in several fields, including biology, physics, chemistry, and engineering, and provide them with state- of-the-art research equipment. The U.S. Department of Education made its largest research award ever to the Hopkins Center for Social Organization of Schools, working with Howard University. A five-year $27.5 million grant was given to establish and jointly operate a research center dedicated to improving education, specifically for students most at risk of failing or dropping out of school.

Applied Physics Laboratory researchers developed a communication system that allows doctors to assess a patient's condition from a remote location and then guide quality treatment by less experienced caregivers. The testing of this telemedicine proto-

type involved a Navy battle group in the western Pacific, with the COMSAT Corporation underwriting use of its satellites. This capability will help to maintain combat readiness, but also has civilian applications such as medical advice to emergency vehicles at an accident scene, assistance of remote medical specialists in a variety of situations, and increased services provided by visiting home nurses.

The School of Public Health, the oldest and largest such school in the world, derives much of its strength from renewed funding of ongoing projects that are of vital importance to world health and to national health policy. The Fogarty International Center renewed its grant of more than $500,000 a year through 1999 for research and training projects in developing countries, and made an additional award supporting eight AIDS-related projects. The U.S. Health Care Financing Administration awarded $1.7 million to Hopkins public health researchers to further develop an improved system for risk adjustment to determine what is fair compensation for HMO's and managed care providers.

At 10 years old, the School of Nursing is the University's newest division and is already renowned for its high-quality health research. This year the school received a grant of nearly $785,000 from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command to explore pain management and coping strategies for breast cancer victims who undergo painful bone marrow transplants. This research is part of the Army's $151.5 million breast cancer research plan, which is part of an even larger, nationwide federal initiative in women's health.

In the Decade of the Brain, Johns Hopkins is capitalizing upon its expertise in neuroscience. The Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute was awarded a $1.3 million grant from the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust to establish three new laboratories dedicated to studying how the human brain perceives. The research hinges on a "systems approach" among the three laboratories in studying human perception.

Brain research at the School of Medicine has demonstrated that it may be possible to develop a drug to treat cocaine addiction. This work was supported by Guilford Pharmaceuticals, a Baltimore- based company specializing in treatments for neurological disorders, and The Abell Foundation, a philan-thropy that supports research to solve drug abuse problems. Hopkins researchers, with $2 million from the National Institute of Mental Health, are using sophisticated new imaging techniques to generate and dissect "virtual" models of patient brains. This work could lead to identification of the genes that cause or promote schizophrenia and to therapies that may help prevent the disease. The Office of Naval Research provided support to researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering for research into how the human brain learns new motor skills. The research, which is conducted by means of a small, portable, multi-joint robotic arm that physically interacts with the human arm, is made possible because of the strong link between the Schools of Medicine and Engineering.

Specialized Center of Research (SCOR) grants are the most highly prized and most competitive medical research grants. Heart researchers at Hopkins received two five-year SCOR grants, providing $14 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Hopkins is the only institution in the country to be awarded two SCOR grants simultaneously.

Exciting new developments in information infrastructure, networking, and improved access to worldwide Internet resources will further enhance Hopkins research capability. A state-of-the- art library network was introduced at the Applied Physics Laboratory this year, and a $1.9 million grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts has made possible a high-speed data transmission network that will link the Homewood campus to a significantly upgraded information system at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. In addition, Project Muse received a $400,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to advance the University s effort to provide worldwide networked access to the entire journal catalog of the Johns Hopkins University Press.

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