Distinctions

• UC Irvine’s Program in Public Health is awarded $1.62 million to lead the University of California’s effort to develop nontoxic alternatives to everyday products, such as electronics, plastics, lighting products, fuels and pesticides. Public Health professor Oladele Ogunseitan becomes the inaugural director of the Green Materials Program, which will foster research and graduate-level training at UC campuses.
• UC Irvine professor Guiyun Yan receives a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center to expand global health studies and develop a master’s-degree concentration in the Program in Public Health. The grant also will fund traveling fellowships for at least a half-dozen undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral fellows.
• UC Irvine is the home site for the Pacific-Southwest Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research – one of only 10 federally funded regional centers dedicated to research for countering threats from bioterrorism agents and infectious diseases.
• UC Irvine vector biologists are leading an international effort funded by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative to develop new genetic methods to control the transmission of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease affecting tens of millions of people worldwide.
• UC Irvine is ranked among the top 50 U.S. medical schools for research and primary care, according to US News & World Report. Health sciences researchers received $142 million in research funding in 2006-07, half the campus total.
• The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UC Irvine is one of only 37 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive centers in the nation and the only one in Orange County.
• UC Irvine is one of only eight institutions nationwide to be named part of the NCI’s Cancer Genetics Network to examine the complex interactions between genes and cancer. The NCI also chose the Chao Center as one of six in the nation to conduct studies on promising new cancer prevention drugs.
• UC Irvine cancer epidemiologists are responsible for handling nearly all California cancer registry information for the SEER database, the world’s largest repository of cancer information.
• UC Irvine pediatric researchers are helping refine and field test the initial protocol for the National Children’s Study, planned as the largest and most comprehensive long-term study of environmental effects on child development and health in U.S. history. Orange County, Calif., was named as one of six initial national Vanguard Centers for the study.
• UC Irvine brain imaging researchers are directing the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, a multi-million dollar, nationwide effort to standardize imaging methods that will allow for large-scale studies on brain disease and illness.
• UC Irvine is one of only seven institutions nationwide to be named a Level I Accredited Educational Institute by the American College of Surgeons.