University of Miami - Research

Research

Sponsored research expenditures for fiscal year 2008 reached a record of more than $326 million. Those funds support over 5,000 graduate students and postdoctoral trainees. In Fiscal Year 2006, UM received $127 million in federal research funding, including $89.5 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and $16.7 million from the National Science Foundation. Of the $8.2 billion appropriated by Congress in 2009 as a part of the stimulus bill for research priorities of the National Institutes of Health, the Miller School received $40.5 million. In addition to research conducted in the individual academic schools and departments, Miami has the following University-wide research centers:

• The Center for Hemispheric Policy
• The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS)
• Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy
• The Miami European Union Center: This group is a consortium with Florida International University (FIU) established in Fall 2001 with a grant from the European Commission through its delegation in Washington, D.C., intended to research economic, social, and political issues of interest to the European Union.
• The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies
• John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics – studies possible causes of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and macular degeneration.
• Center on Research and Education for Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)
• Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research

The Miller Medical School has more than more than $200 million per year in external grants and contracts to fund 1,500 ongoing projects. The medical campus includes more than 500,000 sq ft (46,000 m2) of research space with plans underway to build a new UM Life Science Park, which will add an additional 2,000,000 sq ft (190,000 m2) of space adjacent to the medical campus. UM's Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute seeks to understand the biology of stem cells and translate basic research into new regenerative therapies. In 2007, Joshua Hare, MD and colleagues reported that a new stem cell therapy was safe for the treatment of myocardial infarction and reduced complications from the condition.

As of 2008, the Rosenstiel School receives $50 million in annual external research funding. Their laboratories include a salt-water wave tank, a five-tank Conditioning and Spawning System, multi-tank Aplysia Culture Laboratory, Controlled Corals Climate Tanks, and DNA analysis equipment. The campus also houses an invertebrate museum with 400,000 specimens, and operates the Bimini Biological Field Station, an array of oceanographic high-frequency radar along the US east coast, and the Bermuda aerosol observatory. UM also owns the Little Salt Spring, a site on the National Register of Historic Places, in North Port, Florida, where RSMAS performs archaeological and paleontological research.

UM is building a brain imaging annex to the James M. Cox Jr. Science Center within the College of Arts and Sciences. The building will include a human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) laboratory, where scientists, clinicians and engineers can study fundamental aspects of brain function. Construction of the lab is funded in part by a $14.8 million in stimulus money grant from the National Institute of Health.

In 2004, UM, which received a total of $124 million in science and engineering (S&E) funding from the U.S. federal government, was the largest Hispanic-serving recipient and also ranked 54th in Federal S&E obligations among all universities. Three-fourths of that university's Federal S&E funds, $92 million, came from the Department of Health and Human Services, largely for its medical campus.