The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a joint department in the School of Medicine and School of Engineering, ranked fifth in the nation in the Blue Ridge Institute database of National Institutes of Health funding in 2019, the fourth straight year the department has ranked in the Blue Ridge top five.

“We are proud to witness the steady and continued growth of research in our department,” said Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D. “For the fourth straight year, we have increased funding and enhanced our stature among the nation’s most prominent biomedical engineering departments. This expansion reflects the support of the Schools of Engineering and Medicine, and collaborative research across the institution, with several multi-PI grants.”

The department brought in $5,316,407 in NIH grant funding in 2019, an increase from the previous year and marking the second consecutive year BME has exceeded the $5 million mark. Recent awards include several R01 awards in to professors in the department, including a four-year $2.6 million grant awarded to Zhang's team in July 2019 for the study of neonatal cardiac regenerative potential and regulators in large mammals. 

The rankings are published by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, which lists all NIH funding for U.S. medical schools. The BME departments of Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, ranked first, second, and third, respectively.