The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Mark Hauswald, UNM School of Medicine professor of Emergency Medicine and the lead investigator, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Circumferential Abdominal-Pelvic Pressure Device for Postpartum Hemorrhage.”
Also participating in the UNM investigation are co-principal investigator David Wachter, MD, MS, assistant professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, and Nancy Kerr, MD, clinical assistant professor of ObGyn, who is the lead author of the study.
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Hauswald’s project is one of over 85 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To receive funding, Hauswald and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas: polio eradication, HIV, sanitation and family health technologies, and mobile health. Applications for the current open round, Grand Challenges Explorations Round 7, will be accepted through May 19, 2011.
Hauswald, Wachter and Kerr have developed inexpensive devices that decrease blood flow to the pelvic organs. These devices can be made on site in the developing world and have the potential to save some of the estimated 150,000 women who bleed to death every year after delivery. They are conducting their study in Nepal because one in every 31 women there dies from a pregnancy complication. About half of them bleed to death.
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US $100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to nearly 500 researchers from more than 40 countries. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.
The latest issue of Diversity Matters at UNM is now available online. Featured in this issue are the 2nd Annual Presidential Luminaria Awards Winners, recognizing individuals and organizations who have “lit the way for diversity” at UNM; UNM Black Student Campus Climate Survey, conducted in March 2011 the survey provides baseline information regarding areas of improvement in building a positive campus climate for UNM’s Black Students; Islamic Awareness Week, which was a huge success this year.
UNM Regents Approve 2011–2012 Budget
Regents at the University of New Mexico today approved a $2.042 billion budget for the main campus, health sciences center and UNM Hospital, a decrease of 3.4 percent from the 2010–2011 budget. Earlier this month, regents had approved 5.5 percent increase of tuition and fees for Fiscal Year 2012.
The budget reflects a rapidly changing level of support from the state of New Mexico. UNM has absorbed $63 million in state funding cuts from the legislature over the last three years. New Mexico taxpayers now contribute 13.5 percent of the UNM budget, down from 20 percent in 2008–2009. UNM’s share of the state’s overall higher education budget has also decreased. In addition, 72 percent of the latest tuition increase will return to state coffers in the form of the tuition tax credit.
The budget reflects university priorities with a strengthened emphasis on the core academic mission. Of note, this year UNM has set aside $2 million to hire new faculty, $500,000 for part-time faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and $562,734 for graduate and teaching assistant positions.
Continuing budget reductions have forced some departments to reduce service levels. For example Johnson Center, which provides recreational services to students, staff, faculty and the community, will no longer be open on weekends, beginning tomorrow.
Other departments that offer services such as math and science classes for minority students, youth recreation and leadership programs, college preparatory mentoring and judicial education, and the New Mexico Historical Review are also facing serious cuts. The budget did make a specific exception for UNM Press, which publishes scholarly works by the faculty, by continuing to subsidize the press for another year as it works on a new business model.
It is as yet unclear what impact the federal budget cut agreement will have on university finances. UNM President David J. Schmidly says, “We have not yet seen the impact of federal fund cuts on the university.” And UNM Health Sciences Center Chancellor Dr. Paul Roth says possible pending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid funding from the federal government may have very serious implications in the future.
Media contacts: Susan McKinsey (505) 277‑1807; mckinsey@unm.edu or Karen Wentworth (505) 277‑5627; kwent2@unm.edu