Two USF Health Morsani College of Medicine research-focused institutes rank among the Top 10 Institutes and Centers within Florida’s State University System (SUS). The ranking was derived from the SUS 2018 survey of its 536 university institutes and centers engaged in scientific research, education, community service and other scholarly activity supported by public and private funds.
The USF Health Informatics Institute (HII) was the No 1 institute with $69.6 million in total expenditures. HII is led by Distinguished University Professor Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, who ranks in the top 1 percent of all National Institutes of Health-funded principal investigators worldwide (Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, 2018). He has made USF an international hub for NIH epidemiological research initiatives in both type 1 diabetes and rare diseases.
The USF Health Heart Institute, directed by Samuel Wickline, MD, professor of cardiovascular sciences, attained the No. 7 spot, with $13.4 million in total expenditures. The Heart Institute, created with the support of state and county funding, brings together NIH-funded laboratory researchers and physician-scientists to pioneer new discoveries for heart attacks, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases.
Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, leads the USF Health Informatics Institute
Virtually every major university conducting type 1 diabetes research is linked to Dr. Krischer’s institute at USF Health. The HII team coordinates, analyzes and maintains data from several international NIH-sponsored clinical networks investigating the causes and outcomes of type 1 diabetes, including The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY), TrialNet, the Rare and Atypical Diabetes Network (RADIANT), and the Trial to Reduce IDDM in the Genetically at Risk (TRIGR). Members of the Institute also have funding from industry, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and the NIH for studies in oncology, type 2 diabetes, molecular biology and “big data” (‘omics).
“The Health Informatics Institute has been able to design and implement an infrastructure to support high performance computing and big data and create a platform for scientific advances yet to come,” Dr. Krischer said.
Samuel Wickline, MD, is founding director of the USF Health Heart Institute.
The USF Health Heart Institute will be housed within the new Morsani College of Medicine building now in the final stages of construction in downtown Tampa. By bridging basic science and clinical translational research to create new therapies for heart disease, generating biomedical inventions leading to patents and licenses, and attracting biotech and pharmaceutical companies with its innovative work, the Heart Institute is expected to be a major driver of economic activity in the Tampa Bay region.
“USF has put forward a significant investment to pursue solutions to cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death and health care expenditures worldwide,” said Dr. Wickline, a pioneer in harnessing nanotechnology to combat all types of inflammatory diseases. “It’s vital to the public good for universities to undertake applied translational research that achieves useful bench-to-bedside successes.”
