Pharmacy Faculty Ranks Second in NIH Funding Category

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has advanced to second place in terms of individual grant funding awarded per Ph.D. faculty member from the National Institutes of Health.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) released the report showing UB has moved from fourth place in the category in fiscal year 2002-03 to second in fiscal year 2003-04.

The AACP, a national organization that represents pharmaceutical education and educators, ranks NIH funding in several categories at the nation's 64 schools of pharmacy with active research programs.

With NIH funding to faculty members totaling $4,043,474 in 2003-04, the average award per UB faculty member was $258,544, according to the AACP report.

That's a 32.64 percent increase over 2002-03, when the average award per faculty member in the UB pharmacy school was $194,916.

The UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has 13 full-time Ph.D. faculty members, or about half the number found in many U.S. schools of pharmacy.

Wayne K. Anderson, Ph.D., professor and dean of the school, said he was especially pleased that only the University of California at San Francisco ranked higher in the survey category this year.

"It's gratifying to move up in the rankings because we are smaller than the other schools in the survey," Anderson said. "Our faculty works efficiently and effectively with the grants they receive and, as a result, we had a strong showing on the per-faculty basis."

The UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is the second-oldest component of the university and the only pharmacy school in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. The school, which includes a Department of Pharmacy Practice and a Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, offers a number of professional, undergraduate and graduate programs directed at several areas of the pharmaceutical sciences.

The school -- part of UB's academic health center that includes the schools of Dental Medicine, Public Health and Health Professions, Nursing, and Medicine and Biomedical Sciences --– has worked to transform the role of pharmacy from a professional practice orientation to one that includes major basic and clinical research activities.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the SUNY.