Tuskegee University receives nearly $8 million grant towards new cancer research facility
Tuskegee University is one step closer to having a new cancer research facility focused on health disparities in underrepresented populations.
University officials said Wednesday that the school received a $7.93 million grant to build a new biomedical annex to the Carver Research Center facility
The grant proposal, authored by Dr. Clayton Yates, director of the Center for Biomedical Research, and Dr. Channapatna Prakash, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, received one of the highest scores possible of any institution that entered the national competition involving all major research universities. The competition was funded by the NIH Biomedical Research Facility for the Center for Geonomics Health Disparity Research.
“Tuskegee has a long, rich history as an advocate for research and healthcare for the underserved community,” said Dr. Charlotte P. Morris, Tuskegee University president. “What this grant will do by funding a new facility to support our work around cancer research cannot be understated. Tuskegee’s efforts to understand cancer genomics will impact generations within this community and beyond.”
“This is the first time TU has received an infrastructure grant of this size in a competitive arena and only the second science building to be built in the past 30 years and a third one in the past 70 years,” said Dr. Prakash. “This building will be transformational in providing a 21st century science setting for our cancer genomics research and will help attract top talent as well.”
The 8,600-square-foot biomedical research building will house Tuskegee scientists focusing on computational and genomics related to health disparities. The proposed facility will expand the number of research faculty, students and post-doctoral fellows engaged in health disparities and biomedical research at Tuskegee.
Construction is expected to begin in Summer of 2023 and will be completed by Spring of 2025.
