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Each year, NIH funding to U.S. medical schools is made public, including a department-by-department breakdown of the award data. The grant analysis for fiscal year 2017 has just been released (see brimr.org), and UNC’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology now ranks 3rd among its peers (i.e., microbiology departments at public university medical schools).

Ten years ago, M&I was ranked 8th among its peer departments in terms of NIH funding. Since then, our Department’s NIH grant revenue has increased by 48%. This is not a consequence of faculty expansion, since the total number of primary faculty with laboratories is unchanged. What these numbers reflect is a remarkable funding success rate for our Department despite persistently low NIH grant paylines during the last ten years.

The other basic science departments at UNC’s School of Medicine – Genetics, Pharmacology, Biochemistry & Biophysics, Cell Biology & Physiology – are also ranked in the top 3 among their peers. In FY2017, no other medical school in the U.S. (at public OR private universities) could make that claim.