The $4.7 million award is the sixth competitive renewal of the Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Research Fellowship to the UI Cardiovascular Research Center. This fellowship program, funded since July 1, 1975, is under the direction of Francois M. Abboud, M.D., the Edith King Pearson Chair in Cardiovascular Research, professor of internal medicine and physiology and biophysics, and director of the UI Cardiovascular Research Center.

This is the longest period of time that an Institutional National Research Service Award has been granted to the UI Carver College of Medicine by the NIH.

"Our success has depended on the team effort of these outstanding and dedicated mentors, the excellence of their scientific record and the state-of-the-art resources and core facilities of our Cardiovascular Research Center and Carver College of Medicine," Abboud said. Emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of this program, Abboud continued, "In our environment, the whole has always been greater than the sum of its parts."

The NIH grant supports 15 postdoctoral research trainees each year. Areas of research in cardiovascular training include membrane biology and ion channels, integrative neurobiology of cardiovascular regulation, vascular biology and hypertension. Core resources at the UI support these multidisciplinary research themes and include the Transgenic Animal Facility, Gene Transfer Vector Core, Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and the Center for Gene Therapy of Cystic Fibrosis and Other Genetic Diseases.

Since its inception, the program has provided opportunities for young researchers to be exposed to diverse research disciplines in the clinical and basic sciences. Over the past 30 years, more than 300 cardiovascular scientists and cardiologists have received research training through this program. More than 25 senior established investigators from several different UI departments assume responsibility for mentoring researchers for periods of one to three years.

The five-year renewal began May 1 and extends through the program's 36th year in 2011.