Idaho Attracts National Institutes of Health Grant

In February of 2002 researchers at the University of Idaho received $10.2 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a Center for Research on Processes in Evolution. It is the largest NIH grant received in the WWAMI region outside of Washington state, and the largest single research grant in the history of the University of Idaho.

The Center’s researchers study the evolution of drug resistance in microbes and how specific viruses choose their hosts. In particular, researchers are using computational biology to interpret biomedical research. By identifying evolutionary patterns, University of Idaho researchers hope to forecast future disease threats and possible treatment outcomes. The center director is Dr. Larry Forney, chair of biological sciences at the University of Idaho.

This grant follows a $6 million, three-year NIH grant to the University of Idaho in October 2001. The Institutional Development Award (IdeA) Program grant funds a Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network at the University of Idaho, Idaho State University and Boise State University. Dr. Michael Laskowski, UW assistant dean, affiliate professor of physiology and biophysics, and WWAMI director at the University of Idaho and Washington State University, administers the program. Each institution is establishing an interconnected bioinformatics network to allow rapid sharing and analysis of biomedical data. The University of Idaho will use the funding to develop expertise in microarray analysis as well.