A future forged without steel

From next week's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Francisco.

Joan Lorden looks at how the University of Alabama at Birmingham has grown into a billion-dollar research institution.

In the early 1960s, urban renewal projects swept across the United States. Low-income housing was levelled to make room for large-scale public works. While the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts emerged in New York City, a research university was established in Birmingham, Alabama, a city then dominated by the steel industry. In the ensuing years, steel and education followed opposite trajectories. By 1970, the University of Alabama at Birmingham had emerged as an independent institution focused on its medical school and other health related programmes. Today, it is the largest employer in the state of Alabama and ranks 26th among all US institutions in federal research and development funding. The UAB has become an object of study for older, more established institutions.

The UAB's growth into an institution with a billion-dollar budget and more than $300 million in extramural research support would not have happened without parallel growth in federal funding for biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. But the availability of federal funds was not a sufficient condition to account for the UAB's growth, and its location in an historically poor state has meant that the obstacles to growth have been substantial.

To succeed as a research university, the UAB sacrificed breadth choosing to focus on biomedical sciences. Graduate programmes either support the research mission or are closely tied to the urban mission of the institution. The largest doctoral programmes are in areas such as biochemistry and molecular genetics, microbiology, cell biology, medical psychology and biomedical engineering. Support for graduate students comes overwhelmingly from federal research grants.

In a state with no capital budget, the construction of new space and the purchase of major research instrumentation are the responsibility of the institution. Amenities for undergraduates are limited in an institution whose priorities are recruiting and retaining the best faculty and providing them with high quality research space.

Fiscal constraints have fostered collaboration. The university's website lists more than 50 active research centres. Established five years ago, in acknowledgement of the essential role of interdisciplinary collaboration in the growth of the UAB, a competitive university-wide centres programme stimulates collaboration and recognises the important role of centres in providing a research infrastructure. Shared resources are key to providing equipment for research and they ensure that new investi-gators have access to state-of-the-art facilities.

Collaboration comes easiest in the biomedical and behavioural science disciplines. Outside these areas, in engineering and the physical sciences, investigators face a problem of critical mass. Federal funding from the National Science Foundation's Experimental programme to stimulate competitive research (Epscor) has given a boost to relatively new departments such as biomedical engineering. From a faculty of five a decade ago, this department now has 20 members and has chosen to develop three key areas: implants, cardiac electrophysiology and imaging. Taking advantage of Epscor funding and the university-wide centres programme, the department has stretched its boundaries. It has developed an interdisciplinary, biomedical implant centre that draws together 50 investigators, including materials scientists from physics, chemistry and engineering programmes state-wide, and it has forged strong links with industry.

Alabama ranks 18th among the states for its support of higher education. What this figure masks is the large number of regional universities, four-year institutions, community colleges and other institutions that are supported. In the absence of mission-based funding that recognises the costs associated with running a major research university, the state's research institutions have been left well behind their peers in other states.

As other cities and states look to their research universities as engines for economic growth, they have begun to invest handsomely. Michigan has already invested $400 million in life sciences research as it attempts to create a life sciences corridor and to challenge the domination of states such as California in biotechnology. Billions of dollars in private funds have poured into the endowments of private research universities and older public research universities with name recognition and large cadres of loyal alumni. Add these funds to state investments, and the true scale of the competition that the UAB and other Alabama research universities face becomes clear.

Building on its strong scientific base, the UAB has begun to expand its economic impact though technology transfer and small business development. Support from the city of Birmingham, in the form of land for a new business incubator and research park, has helped to create the nucleus of a high-technology industry. Groups such as the Biotechnology Association of Alabama are increasing the visibility of Birmingham's biotechnology strength and are encouraging the state to provide incentives for small high-technology businesses. Innovative programmes such as Emerging Technology Partners link universities and private investors to fund professional management for new high-technology university spin-off companies. Access to adequate venture capital, sufficient numbers of skilled managers and an identifiable state programme designed to foster biotechnology, remain unrealised goals.