IU's Commitment to Indiana's Future
Leadership
The Indiana Life Sciences Initiative: An Update from Vice President Craig Brater
Issue No. 3
June 18, 2007
Friends and Colleagues,
This past legislative session, Indiana University leadership focused on generating support for its strategic plan to build a research base capable of supporting the expansion of Indiana's life sciences industry. The 12-year strategic plan, the Indiana Life Sciences Initiative, aims to increase the bench-to-bedside discoveries at IU by creating better treatments for illnesses and diseases, increasing our ability to transfer these discoveries to "spin-off" companies, and expanding research and education broadly throughout Indiana.
This first year, the legislature placed $20 million into a fund managed by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, of which $15 million will support IU's recruitment of new research faculty and $5 million will support the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative at Purdue.
We greatly appreciate the General Assembly's decision to support our initiative by making these funds available to IU and Purdue — especially in light of the General Assembly's need to deal with budgetary pressures that included property tax relief and a state revenue forecast that shrank by $130 million during the last weeks of the session.
In concert with their $15 million funding for faculty recruitment at IU, the General Assembly provided new capital spending for life sciences-related projects that include:
- $18.3 million for the Cyber Infrastructure Building in Bloomington
- $20 million for the Neurosciences Research Building in Indianapolis
- $10 million for the IU School of Medicine–South Bend, matching a donor's gift to Notre Dame for this collaborative expansion project
In addition to this funding, the General Assembly was very generous to IU with a nine percent increase in the medical education centers' operating budgets over the two years of the biennium and a $100,000 planning grant for a school of public health.
IU proposed in the Indiana Life Sciences Initiative that the state, along with IU and the state's other research universities, make a decade-long series of investments to enhance the state's existing life sciences research and manufacturing strengths to produce more discoveries, create new jobs and businesses, and improve health care for Hoosiers.
The emphasis on advancing research in the priority areas outlined in our strategic plan is critical to the success of the initiative and we believe to the state's future prosperity. The faculty at IU contributes enormously to these critical areas with work that already has made differences in the lives of many afflicted with diseases targeted in the plan, as well as related disorders. This work will benefit from the General Assembly's support.
Best regards,
D. Craig Brater, M.D.
Vice President for Life Sciences
