Biomedical engineering ranks in top five in NIH funding for fourth straight year

UAB Biomedical Engineering brings in more NIH funding than regional peers according to data from the Blue Ridge Institute.The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department in the School of Medicine and School of Engineering, ranked fifth in the nation in the amount of funding it received from the National Institutes of Health in 2019, the fourth year the department has ranked in the NIH’s top five based on the database of the Blue Ridge Institute.

“We are proud to witness the steady and continued growth of research in our department,” said Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair in UAB’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “For the fourth straight year, we have increased funding and enhanced our stature among the nation’s most prominent biomedical engineering departments. This expansion reflects the support of the schools of Engineering and Medicine, and collaborative research across the institution, with several multi-PI grants.”

The department brought in $5,316,407 in NIH grant funding in 2019, an increase from the previous year and marking the second consecutive year BME has exceeded the $5 million mark. Recent awards include several R01 awards to professors in the department, including a four-year, $2.6 million grant awarded to Zhang’s team in July 2019, for the study of neonatal cardiac regenerative potential and regulators in large mammals. 

The rankings are published by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, which lists all NIH funding for medical schools in the United States. The BME departments of Stanford, Johns Hopkins and University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill ranked first, second and third, respectively.