IRVINE : 7 UCI Researchers Win Medical Grants

Seven promising young medical researchers at UC Irvine have been awarded a total of $60,000 in grants to launch their research careers.

The recipients were chosen by the Medical Research and Education Society, a UCI support group of prominent Orange County business and medical community leaders, said MRES spokeswoman Kimberly Capwell. The seven, chosen from among 28 candidates, will receive from $7,000 to $11,000 each, depending on their project needs.

The grant winners are: Joshua Atiba, an assistant professor of medicine and pharmacology; Philip Carpenter, an assistant clinical professor of pathology; Kenneth Chang, assistant professor of medicine; George Ehring, an assistant research physiologist; Yi Jin, an assistant adjunct professor of psychiatry; Carol Major, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and John Weiss, an assistant professor of neurology.

The grant funding is meant to counter the problem young researchers encounter in developing a track record that will enable them to compete with established researchers for financial support from the National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s chief research funding arm for medical research.

“(This) seed funding provides researchers with support at a critical time--during the exploration or launching of a research project,” said Peggy Pargoff, a member of the MRES board of directors. “Very often it is these initial studies that . . . (lead to) major breakthroughs.”

One example is Michael Samoszuk, who received $8,000 from the support group in 1986 and was later able to attract a $500,000 federal grant to continue his work in immunology and Hodgkin’s disease, Capwell said.

This year’s awards bring to $320,000 the total amount of grants given to UCI researchers since the group was founded in 1982.