The North Carolina Biotechnology Center has renamed its Faculty Recruitment Grant to honor Oliver Smithies, one of the programs earliest recruits.
The announcement was made last week at a reception honoring the achievements of Smithies, other Biotechnology Center faculty recruits, and student science fair competition winners. Smithies and two other researchers earned th 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Investment in outstanding university faculty researchers is the first step in the long-term development process that brings biotechnology products to market. With that in mind, the Biotechnology Center created the Faculty Recruitment Grant to assist universities in attracting these top scientists to North Carolina and outfitting their labs once they arrived.
A brief look at the numbers from the program’s 22-year history:
- 52 scholars recruited.
- $9,872,403.20 in state funds expended.
- $362,799,695.07 in federal and other research grants won by recruited faculty.
- $36.75 in research dollars to North Carolina for every dollar spent on recruitment.
- Nine companies, eight still active, founded
- Four members of the National Academy of Science.
- One Nobel Laureate, Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
In addition, departments and strengths were created at North Carolina universities where there were none before. Research from these laboratories has improved the health and everyday lives of people in North Carolina and all over the world.
The grant program will now be known as The Oliver Smithies Faculty Recruitment Grant. For more information about the program itself, visit our grants pages.
