UAB to Create Research Department on Huntsville Campus

The School of Medicine at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) has received a $1 million grant from the Alpha Foundation to establish a research department at the school’s Huntsville Regional Medical Campus.

Posted on October 12, 2004 at 9:45 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The School of Medicine at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) has received a $1 million grant from the Alpha Foundation to establish a research department at the school’s Huntsville Regional Medical Campus. The grant will allow the school to create the necessary framework and infrastructure to initiate a research program.

Grant funds will be used to hire a director of research and support staff. UAB will establish a board that will monitor the program’s development, award internal grants to faculty and students and assist in obtaining external grants.

UAB’s Huntsville Regional Medical Campus offers a community-based clinical education program for medical school students as well as residency training in family medicine.

“Research is an integral part of an academic medical center and we feel it is vitally important that our faculty, residents and medical students in Huntsville have the opportunity to engage in research, both for their own educational benefit and for the betterment of health care in the community,” said Dr. Robert R. Rich, senior vice president and dean of the school of medicine. “The Alpha Foundation’s generous grant will allow us to gather the building blocks we need to create a high quality research program in Huntsville.”

Rich says the research program will enable the Huntsville Regional Medical Campus to attract superior faculty and students to the campus and will promote patient care by addressing clinical and health care issues. The program is expected to become self-supporting over time by garnering external grants from state and federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health.

The Alpha Foundation is a Huntsville, Alabama based nonprofit corporation that is dedicated to improving the human condition through grants to educational, scientific and other charitable organizations. A major emphasis of the Alpha Foundation is support to organizations dedicated to the use of biotechnology to aid in the discovery and cure of diseases.