UCI awarded $45 million for infectious disease research

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded UC Irvine $45 million over five years for infectious disease research. The renewal grant, which is the campus’s largest ever, went to the Pacific-Southwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research and its director, Dr. Alan Barbour, a UCI infectious disease expert (pictured). The Pacific-Southwest center is one of only 11 federally funded research sites dedicated to countering threats from bioterrorism agents and emerging infections, and its researchers are located at UCI and 19 other universities and institutes in California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.