The Departments of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh have jumped in the rankings of NIH funding.
In 2021, the Department of Ophthalmology was 25. The following year, they rose to 8. The current (2024) ranking is 5. For the fiscal year of 2025, the Department has received $15,729,241 in NIH funding.
“This reflects the ability to attract top talents, to assemble integrated teams and to develop competitive projects,” said Department Chair and Director, UPMC Vision Institute, Dr. José-Alain Sahel. “The support from our institutions and the EEF helped in recruiting and supporting those talents. This support has been amply leveraged.”
In 2021, the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery was 3. The following year, they climbed a notch to 2, where they’re holding steady.
Every year since 2006, the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research (BRIMR), an independent nonprofit organization, has published rankings of institutions, Departments, and investigators based on the funding they receive from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a guest editorial in The American Journal of Pathology (March 2022). These standings are widely cited as a measure of scientific vitality and reflect NIH funds awarded during a given federal fiscal year, which ends on September 30.
“This is the only objective measure of success in academic medicine for strength in research,” said Lawton Snyder, CEO of the Eye & Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh, which supports both Departments. “Moving from 26 to 5 in such a short period of time is evidence of how Dr. Sahel and his outstanding team of clinicians and scientists are accomplishing what they set out to do when Dr. Sahel was hired in 2016. We also know that the Department is still growing, and we fully expect the rise in ranking to continue.”
The Department of Otolaryngology-HNS had and has been very strong in head and neck cancer research. In 2017, the Pittsburgh Hearing Research Center (PHRC) was founded. Since then, they have hired six NIH-funded investigators focusing on hearing research, with 10 current NIH grants. “As a result, we are now one of the most important and productive hearing research programs in the United States,” said PHRC Director and Vice Chair of Basic Science Research, Thanos Tzounopoulos, PhD. “And we remain one of the most important and productive programs in head and neck cancer research.”
In fact, the Department of Otolaryngology-HNS went from $5.4 million in 2017 to $13.7 million in 2024. “The funding represents a huge boost to all research, including discovery, translational, and clinical research,” said Dr. Peter Santa Maria, MD, PhD, Vice Chair of Clinical and Translational Research and Chief, Division of Otology/Neurotology. “It means we can not only promise the best standards of care but also to discover and develop new treatments in the future.”
Much research work is done before reaching the level of funding to have proof of concept and compete with the best around the country. Breakthroughs in research can be tracked to NIH funding, which means patients will benefit from these efforts.
“NIH has been and should remain the major funder for transformative basic and translational research and education that lead to better patient care and commercialization,” said Dr. Tzounopoulos.
Indeed, “this success is bittersweet in the current environment,” Dr. Sahel said.