Support UW Medicine: Facts

To improve the health of the public by advancing medical knowledge, providing outstanding primary and specialty care to the citizens of the region, and preparing tomorrow’s physicians, scientists, and other health professionals.

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Faculty includes

Honors and Activities

Five Nobel Laureates are members of the faculty.

Linda Buck, Ph.D.
Affiliate professor of physiology and physics; 2004 Nobel Prize for discovery of mechanisms of smell

Lee Hartwell, Ph.D.
Professor of genome sciences and adjunct professor of medicine; 2001 Nobel Prize for discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle

Dr. Edwin Krebs and Dr. Edmond Fischer
Professors emeriti in the departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology; 1992 Nobel Prize for discovery of reversible protein phosphorylation

Dr. E. Donnall Thomas
Professor emeritus in the Department of Medicine; 1990 Nobel Prize for his work on bone marrow transplantation

UW faculty have been responsible for many basic science and technological advances in medicine.

UW faculty have been pioneers in numerous areas, including transgenic animal technology, cell replication and signal transduction research, as well as the development of medical ultrasound, renal dialysis, and technology critical to the emerging field of protein science.

UW Medicine researchers are international leaders in genome sciences.

The National Institutes of Health has created the first three National Centers of Excellence in Genomic Sciences. The UW received two of the three awards — one in the School of Medicine and one in the College of Engineering.

Three UW Medicine faculty — Philip Green, Maynard Olson, and Robert Waterston — were among eight scientists worldwide recognized by the Gairdner Foundation for their seminal contributions to the Human Genome Project.

Computational biology provides new approaches to accelerate the pace of biomedical research.

UW Medicine faculty are providing national leadership in genome sciences and in developing new areas of computational biology research, such as the use of computer modeling to predict protein structure.

UW Medicine faculty are leaders in research related to the biomolecular structure of proteins.

Understanding protein complexes may lead to treatment and prevention of devastating diseases. UW scientists are studying dystrophin, a protein necessary for muscle health, in the search for muscular dystrophy treatments. Other scientists are studying the structural genomics of pathogenic protozoa, which cause sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, and malaria.

Ranked No. 1 among primary-care medical schools by U.S. News & World Report for 2009 and for the past 15 years.

Teaching programs ranked among the top in the country in the 2009 rankings (published April 2008):

Family Medicine (No. 1, for 17th straight year)
Rural Medicine (No. 1, for 17th straight year)
AIDS (No. 4)
Bioengineering (No. 5)
Internal Medicine (No. 6)
Geriatrics (No. 7)
Pediatrics (No. 7)
Women’s Health Care (No. 7)
Drug/Alcohol Abuse (No. 8)

UW biomedical research programs have been ranked consistently among the top three schools in receipt of National Institutes of Health grant funding.

UW School of Medicine research provides a significant economic benefit to the community.

The School of Medicine generates an estimated $28 for every state dollar invested. A number of established and start-up biotechnology companies, including Immunex, ZymoGenetics, and ICOS, have their roots in UW School of Medicine research.

UW Medicine hospitals are ranked among the top medical centers in the country.

UW Medical Center ranked in the top 1 percent out of more than 5,000 major medical centers in the 2008 “Best Hospitals Honor Roll” by U.S. News & World Report (published July 2007) and was the first hospital in the country to achieve Magnet Hospital certification, the highest honor awarded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Harborview Medical Center is regarded as one of the best public hospitals in the country. Renowned for its Regional Burn Center, Harborview is the only Level 1 trauma center serving Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and is the designated Disaster Control Hospital for the Pacific Northwest. Ten specialty programs offered at the medical centers were highly rated by U.S. News & World Report, including rehabilitation medicine (No. 3) and cancer (No. 6).

Medic One, the international model for emergency care, was developed at Harborview Medical Center.

The Medic One system was developed in a collaborative effort between Harborview and the Seattle Fire Department. The system, one of the first of its kind in the world, is the model most emulated by communities throughout the country.

UW Medicine is the leading provider of charity medical care in the state of Washington.

Harborview, UW Medical Center, and UW School of Medicine faculty physicians provide more than 60 percent of the hospital-based charity medical care in King County and more than one-third for the state of Washington as a whole.

The five-state WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho) regional medical education network is widely considered the best academic model for training and placement of physicians in underserved communities.

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