Education and Research

Academic

UC San Diego School of Medicine

David A. Brenner, MD, vice chancellor of UC San Diego Health Sciences and dean of UC San Diego School of Medicine

• In 2012, David Brenner, MD, and Don W. Cleveland, PhD, chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, were elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at its 42nd annual meeting. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.
• UC San Diego School of Medicine is ranked 15th in the country in research-intensive programs among 126 medical schools in U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools, 2012 Edition”; its AIDS program in the primary care category is ranked 8th.
• The School of Medicine’s Center for the Future of Surgery opened in 2011 and is one of the largest facilities in the nation catalyzing novel surgical technologies, techniques and teaching methods.
• In 2011, UC San Diego School of Medicine had the eighth highest National Institutes of Health (NIH) total funding of all schools of medicine, according to NIH’s Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT).
• In 2011, UC San Diego School of Medicine faculty ranked fourth nationally in research funding per faculty member, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
• UC San Diego School of Medicine is the region’s only medical school, established in 1968.
• The faculty is made up of more than 1,400 physicians and scientists in 16 academic departments.
• Joint degree programs with UC San Diego main campus and San Diego State University include public health, clinical psychology and audiology.
• New Integrative Scientific Curriculum started August, 2010
  • 125 students accepted each year out of 5,000 applicants
  • Medical Scholars Program, 60 combined bachelor and medical degree students
  • Medical Sciences Training Program, 75 combined MD/PhD students (400 applicants)
  • More than 700 residents and clinical fellows

Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego

Palmer Taylor, PhD, dean

• Established by the University of California Board of Regents in 2000
• Second public school of pharmacy in California and the only one in Southern California
• Admitted charter class in 2002 and graduated its first class in 2006
• Admits 60 PharmD students per year and promotes interdisciplinary education and cooperation through shared classes with UC San Diego School of Medicine students
• Currently 240 PharmD students, 60 PhD students and 30 residents (in 2012)
• Ongoing clinical and educational partnerships in Taiwan, Europe and Nigeria
• Student community service with San Diego Free Clinic and Asian Pacific Center

Research

UC San Diego Health Sciences Research

• UC San Diego’s research awards for FY 2012 totaled more than $1,010,000,000 — an increase of about $50 million over the funding for 2011, according to the Office of Research Affairs at UC San Diego.
• In FY 2012, combined direct and indirect research funding to Health Sciences faculty alone totaled $559,104,470, according to the Office of Contract and Grant Administration at UC San Diego.
• In 2012, an international consortium of scientists studying chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), based at UC San Diego School of Medicine, was awarded a 5-year, $20 million grant by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The grant is the second renewal of funding for a broad-based effort designed to better understand the pathology of CLL — the most common form of leukemia in the Western world — in order to develop new drugs and treatments.
• In 2012, the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) announced that six investigators from UC San Diego Stem Cell Research Program received a total of more than $7 million in CIRM funding, bringing UC San Diego’s total to more than $128 million in CIRM funding since the first awards in 2006.
• In 2011, UC San Diego School of Medicine was among 27 research institutions selected across North America to be part of the Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network, funded by the National Cancer Institute, to establish a network of top academic immunologists to conduct multicenter research on agents that boost patients’ own immune systems in order to fight their cancer.
• In 2011, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which brings together five of the world’s top research institutions — UC San Diego, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute, and La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology — opened a $127 million facility on the campus of UC San Diego to house stem cell researchers from these organizations under one roof.
• In 2011, researchers in the Division of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Medicine, received two federal grants totaling more than $25 million to develop new ways to gather, analyze, use and share vast, ever-increasing amounts of biomedical information.
• In 2011, UC San Diego Health Sciences announced a research collaboration with Pfizer through their Center for Therapeutic Innovation, which is aimed to accelerate and transform drug discovery and development. The potential value to UC San Diego could exceed $50 million in the next five years.
• Steve and Lisa Altman pledged $10 million in 2011 towards the building of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI) in La Jolla — which will include research laboratories and clinical research space to support UC San Diego medical and bioengineering investigators. The building is slated for completion in early 2016.
• UC San Diego Health Sciences and its expanding Clinical and Translational Research Institute received a $37.2 million Clinical Translational Science Award grant in 2010 to speed up the development of laboratory discoveries into effective treatments for patients.
• The Institute for Genomic Medicine, formed in June 2008, leverages UC San Diego Health Sciences strengths in basic science, disease biology, pharmacology, engineering, clinical research and computer science/bioinformatics.
• The National Institutes of Health awarded School of Medicine researchers an inaugural grant in 2008 designed to fast-track the development of a novel Alzheimer’s disease therapy as part of its $50 million Blueprint for Neuroscience Research.
• Roger Tsien, PhD, professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego School of Medicine, shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his role in helping develop and expand the use of green fluorescent proteins.
• Established in 2008, the Institute of Engineering in Medicine focuses on applying engineering principles and techniques to medicine for the creation of innovative and insightful strategies to develop new and unique approaches to health care. It is one of the few institutions in the country to combine the strengths of two major research and teaching enterprises within a university — UC San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering — in an effort to advance human health.