Hutson Receives NYSTAR Faculty Development Grant

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Alan D. Hutson, associate professor and chief of the Division of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, has been awarded a Faculty Development grant from the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) in recognition of academic excellence in the field of bioinformatics.

The grant carries funding of $340,000 -- $260,000 for salaries and $80,000 for equipment. It is part of NYSTAR's Faculty Development Program that assists institutions of higher education in New York State in the recruitment and retention of leading entrepreneurial research faculty in science and technology fields with strong commercial potential.

The NYSTAR Faculty Development grant was used to recruit Hutson, a key investigator in biostastics/statistical genetics, to support the infrastructure of the UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.

NYSTAR officials expect Hutson, who joined the UB faculty in September, to make significant contributions to research in the areas of bioinformatics, bioterrorism/biosecurity and clinical trials, all of which have commercial spin-off potential.

Hutson also will continue his clinical research and will establish a data coordinating center that will be a boon to clinical researchers and keep millions of dollars in New York State that now are being contracted out to data coordinating centers in other states.

Maurizio Trevisan, interim dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions, says Hutson will recruit additional faculty members to the biostatistics division, which is expected to become a full-fledged department in the school.

Hutson came to UB from the University of Florida, where he served as an associate professor in the Department of Statistics, associate director of the Division of Biostatistics in the Department of Statistics, and director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) Informatics Core, which is responsible for the statistical components of 50-70 active clinical trial protocols

yearly. He also was director of the Center for Biostatistics & Epidemiology at Florida, which directs data coordinating centers and develops software for Internet data capture and statistical support of clinical trials.

Hutson received bachelor's and master's degrees in statistics from UB and master's and doctoral degrees in statistics from the University of Rochester.

He lives in Amherst.