History of UCAIR
The Utah Center for Advanced Imaging Research was invented to provide the infrastructure to help the Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s of Radiology obtain and maintain research grant funding. UCAIR has now grown to become a financially independent, university recognized center, supporting all types of imaging research throughout the campus.
In the late 1980’s, research into innovative imaging techniques was conducted in a division of the Department of Radiology called the Medical Imaging Research Laboratory or MIRL. MIRL was composed of a small number of Ph.D.’s who were doing very interesting physics research. A couple of physicians were also involved, but in general MIRL was self contained, little known on campus, but conversely, very well known internationally in the field of imaging science. In the mid 1990’s, the economics of radiology began changing, and it became clear that to survive MIRL (subsequently renamed UCAIR) had to become self-supporting.
The concept of UCAIR began in about 1997 with the idea of growing an endowment from which research would have long term support. The idea took root and in the late 90’s, one physician and one Ph.D. researcher started the research endowment with personal contributions.
In about 2000, Dr. Steve Stevens, the current chairman of Radiology, and Dr. Dennis L. Parker, the current director of UCAIR, met with a few of the Radiology faculty to find a way for research to survive. Dr. Stevens caught the vision of UCAIR and became its champion. UCAIR was conceived as a means to provide the infrastructure to help the Ph.D.’s and MD’s obtain and maintain grant funding.
The proposal was essentially to separate research from clinical income. Let the clinical enterprise run itself and let research manage research. Research income was defined to include a) the royalties from patents on inventions, b) income from pharmaceutical studies, c) returned overhead from research grants, d) cost centers (funds paid for use of services provided by UCAIR), e) infrastructure funding from grants and a center grant if possible, f) an endowment from the Benning Foundation, g) endowed chairs. Dr. Stevens presented our long-term plan to Dr. Betz, the Vice President for Health Sciences and requested startup funds for UCAIR. It is notable that Dr. Stevens requested this as part of a “recruiting package”. He could have requested funds for clinical facilities, but his request was a statement of his total support for UCAIR.
Dr. Betz approved the request and UCAIR began in July of 2002. In order to economize Dr. Parker volunteered to be director of UCAIR with no salary. Dr. Stevens consented and at the same time made it clear that UCAIR was to provide research support for the entire Department of Radiology, not just the Ph.D. component of Radiology. UCAIR was intended to support ALL research in Radiology. An individual was hired to help write grant applications and UCAIR now had an infrastructure of 3 people (Terrie Parker as grants manager, Roy Rowley as proposal manager, and Andrew Liimatta as computer systems manager). In the first year, we more than doubled our grant submissions, and eventually we began to receive increased funding.
But there were difficulties. Ph.D. salaries were not competitive and we couldn’t get permission to recruit more faculty. The problem was, any increase in salary or new hires potentially increased the burden on department (clinical) revenues to provide interim support if or when research faculty lost funding. To solve this, UCAIR suggested to Dr. Stevens that we relinquish any and all department commitment for support. The department would have no responsibility if we failed in our funding. Therefore, there was no longer concern that a failure in research might cause a failure in the clinical business. This also addressed the salary problem. There was no longer a concern on the part of the clinical faculty to keep the Ph.D. salaries low just in case they were forced to the rescue.
The final step came when Dr. Parker suggested to Dr. Betz that, since the UCAIR faculty were now 100% responsible for their salaries from “soft” money, there was no reason to keep salaries so low as to be non-competitive (hindering the recruitment of additional high quality faculty). It was suggested that a position would be much more attractive if we improved the benefit/risk ratio by setting the salaries consistent with the national median. Dr. Betz basically approved and we recreated our salary structure.
While nationally funds are increasingly difficult to obtain, UCAIR faculty are all fully funded and getting by. Start up funding from the Vice President has ended, but we still have reserves enough to last for another year or two. We have not totally doubled our funding as we had promised Dr. Betz. But if you include funds from our direct collaborations, we are very close to doubling our initial funding.
The Future:
Funding levels are dropping and there is much more risk of failure for those living on grant funding. What do we do? Under no circumstance do we want to go back to the situation where we tax clinical income to support research. If research has a lapse in peer reviewed funding, then we have to find another way to deal with this.
Solutions:
1. Build the Research Endowment
This is the one area where we should encourage a contribution from clinical income. If the department were to put money into the endowment, it is a contribution to research and not a tax on the clinical. It is a one time event, and not an ongoing risk. And it provides support into perpetuity. It is totally justified and a wise, long term investment. In the long term it would benefit the department to match or double match every outside contribution.
2. Seek NIH Center Funding
A continuing effort.
3. More Service Recharge Centers in UCAIR
With the recruitment of Dr. John Hoffman, an internationally recognized authority on molecular imaging techniques, we have taken our first major step into the world of molecular imaging research. We should make more people on campus aware of this and invite them to include funding in their grants for this invaluable resource.
4. Expand UCAIR
We are doing all that we can to develop imaging research at all scales. The human scale is working reasonably well, but we would love to see it grow. Further, we need to go forward with the molecular imaging proposal that Dr. Hoffman has been preparing. Under the right circumstance and with the right timing, we can create this structure and ask for university support.
If we do everything that we can to grow the research endowment, UCAIR will thrive and will continue to provide imaging technology excellence to the University community.
