Research Growth

Keck School leaders’ goal is an ambitious one — they want to become one of the top 10 research-oriented medical school in the nation. To do this, Keck School leaders have wisely focused their attention on strengthening the research programs and areas in which Keck School faculty members already excel, while building new programs based on interdisciplinary investigations in the rapidly evolving fields of neurogenetics, bioinformatics and genetic medicine.

Research Funding Soars

Keck research funding has soared in the past 10 years and continues to increase from both public and private sources. The Keck School saw 13.9% growth in 2000 when federal research grants hit an all-time high for the School. In the 2001-2002 fiscal year, funding continued to rise with TK% growth and more than $125 million in government grants.

This success gives confidence to Keck School leaders who have set the ambitious goal of growing the amount of the School’s federal research funding to more than $400 million a year by 2012. To reach this goal, leaders seek to expand federal research funding by 15% annually. USC President Steven Sample has endorsed the goal, saying it’s “an extremely ambitious plan, but one that is clearly attainable.”

Expanding Research Facilities

Construction is complete on the first of four new research facilities on the Health Sciences Campus, the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute. The three others are under construction or in design. In total, new building on the campus will add over 1 million square feet of new and remodeled space for advanced investigations in the biomedical sciences at the Keck School.

Recruiting Excellence

Leaders have sketched out plans to recruit more than 135 new faculty members over the next ten years, concentrating their search on nationally recognized leaders and the most promising young investigators in medicine.

Growing on Strengths

The Keck School is recognized for excellence in a number of research areas, including cancer, preventive medicine, genetic epidemiology, gene therapy, neurology, and metabolic diseases. For the School, the next decade will bring expansion in these research areas as well as in the promising interdisciplinary field of neurogenetics, with the Keck School’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute leading basic research aimed at neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s.

Interdisciplinary Emphasis

To many, what makes Keck School research unique and successful is its emphasis on interdisciplinary and translational research. Multiple institutes, centers and programs support the collaborative research so highly valued by Keck scientists, clinicians and students. Research programs at Keck reach across departments, schools, the university, the nation and even the world, to bring together a variety of perspectives that allows innovative and holistic research.

From Lab Bench to the Bed Side

Translational medicine has become a valued tradition for many Keck researchers and clinicians. At the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, for example, an emphasis on translational research helps to transform the latest scientific advances into potential new treatments, decreasing the time it takes for effective therapies to become available to patients. Working closely with physicians, researchers may follow the development of a basic lab finding as it is tested in clinical trials and, potentially, as it enters the physician’s tool box as an effective new therapy for disease. The cooperative nature of research at the Keck School also means that this process can be speeded up in some cases – giving patients cutting-edge treatments that may be lifesaving and not widely available outside of academic medical centers.

Researching Medicine in the Multi-cultural Metropolis

The location of the Keck School has enabled some researchers to produce unique, valuable research that is highly relevant to medicine in a multi-cultural society. The ability to study the large and diverse metropolis of Los Angeles has been proved pivotal in attracting research funding and recruiting renowned scholars interested in the unique resources that the Keck School and L.A. offer. Keck researchers studying disease in Los Angeles have produced seminal studies of cancer rates and risks, cultural influences on health behavior, AIDS-related illnesses and many other key findings. Keck School research has helped medicine move away from a focus on the health of the white male (the subject of most early medical studies). The result has been a greater understanding of the nature of disease risk, detection, treatment and survival in men, women and children of all ethnicities, lifestyles and backgrounds.