UCLA awarded more than $19 million in NIH stimulus funds

UCLA researchers receiving NIH Recovery Act awards in large numbers

UCLA researchers have received 80 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) grants totaling $19.4 million from the National Institutes of Health thus far. UCLA's largest NIH ARRA grant to date was $1.9 million, awarded to UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), which is dedicated to creating scientific approaches to mapping how the brain is structured and how it works.

Arthur Toga, director of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, submitted 31 proposals in the hope of getting stimulus money. One grant award has already come in. The lab will be able to purchase a supercomputer for $1.9 million.

LONI will use the funds to augment its computational imaging systems that enable advances in Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and brain development research.  Administered by NIH's National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) as part of its High-End Instrumentation grant program, the grant will allow UCLA to purchase an instrumentation package comprising processing, visualization and networking equipment. This package will enhance local, national and international researchers' capacity to perform significant brain mapping and foster growth in the neuroscience field.

"UCLA has been a frontrunner in the adoption of cutting-edge technology to understand dynamic changes such as development and degeneration of the human brain in health and disease," said Arthur W. Toga, director, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging and associate director of the Division of Brain Mapping at UCLA. "This funding puts the next generation of instruments within reach and will make possible cutting-edge biomedical research to help accelerate the translation of basic research to treatments and cures. This equipment also provides far greater efficiency and enables many more investigators to conduct their research."

ARRA provides funds intended to stimulate the economy by creating or maintaining American jobs, while advancing research. The UCLA grants will help expand and improve the university's research capabilities in a large number of disease areas including cancer, HIV/AIDS and Parkinson's disease while at the same time jumpstarting the southern California economy. 

For information about all UCLA's ARRA awards to date, visit report.nih.gov/recovery. For more on all NIH ARRA-funded grants, see www.ncrr.nih.gov/recovery and www.nih.gov/recovery.

The Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, which seeks to improve understanding of the brain in health and disease, is a leader in the development of advanced computational algorithms and scientific approaches for the comprehensive and quantitative mapping of brain structure and function. It is part of the UCLA Department of Neurology, which encompasses more than a dozen research, clinical and teaching programs. The department ranks first among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding. For more information, visit http://www.loni.ucla.edu/.

-UCLA-