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Research and Graduate Education
Centers and Institutes
Interdisciplinary Research Centers
Mission-based Centers
Institutes
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
WVU shares an affiliation with NIOSH, which is located adjacent to the Health Sciences campus. Faculty from throughout the University maintain joint appointments in their academic departments, creating numerous research partnerships in the area of occupational health and related issues.
NIOSH also has a residency program in occupational medicine and collaborative relationships for students in academic programs at West Virginia University. The Institute provides environmental health consultation as well as Patient Cares to workers, employers, and special populations.
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Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI)
The Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, created in 1999 and headquartered on the WVU campus, is a world-class basic science and clinical research institute aimed at preventing, diagnosing, treating, and curing neurological, psychiatric, and other cognitive disorders affecting the human brain. The Institute, a collaborative effort between WVU and Johns Hopkins University, was launched by West Virginia’s U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and named after his mother, who died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Collaborative basic and clinical research programs focus on primary cognitive functions that impact conscious and unconscious human experience – including attention, sensory integration, learning and memory, pleasure and pain, emotions and emotional states, movement coordination, and decision making. Current research focuses on memory and memory disorders, neurodegenerative disorders, mood disorders, epilepsy, central nervous system injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and auditory and visual processing disorders.
The Rockefeller Institute is dedicated to seeking practical solutions to neurological and cognitive impairment through fundamental neuroscience research, with a special emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease and state-of-the-art principles of molecular and cellular neurobiology.
In the summer of 2001, Toyota donated $1 million to the Rockefeller Institute, establishing the Toyota Chair in Advanced Brain Imaging. This gift is expected to attract additional funding and leading researchers in the area of brain imaging to the Institute.
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Sensory Neuroscience Research Center
The Sensory Neuroscience Research Center conducts multidisciplinary studies of sensory systems, relating basic research to the solution of disease and disorders. The center has 13 laboratories.
Thanks to the Sensory Neuroscience Research Center, the WVU School of Medicine was one of 41 U.S. medical schools to receive a prestigious four-year grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for faculty recruitment in neurosciences and construction of a transgenic rodent facility.
SNRC was also awarded an $8 million NIH grant from the National Center for Research Resources to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Sensory Neuroscience to investigate the development and plasticity of sensory systems.
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Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center (MBRCC)
The Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center provides research, teaching, and clinical facilities for scientists and physicians working in the areas of cancer treatment, prevention, and cure.
The Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center is West Virginia’s most comprehensive cancer treatment, research, and education facility, offering a multidisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art treatment options, as well as access to current clinical trials, a variety of education and prevention outreach programs, and some of the top researchers in the country. All standard treatment approaches—chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery—are available, along with advanced treatments not yet available at many other institutions.
The Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center has assembled a team of expert physicians, nurses, technicians, and other staff dedicated to the care of cancer patients. The Cancer Center houses the Cancer Information Service—an NCI-funded national information and education network—and operates the network's toll-free hotline (1-800-4-CANCER). Other Cancer Center facilities include the Betty Puskar Breast Care Center, the Tobacco Research Center, and the WVU Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program—the only program of its kind in West Virginia.
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Center for Advanced Imaging
Located in the Health Sciences Center, the Center for Advanced Imaging is a 12,000 square-foot research and clinical imaging facility. The Center currently operates a General Electric Advance PET scanner, a General Electric PETtrace cyclotron (with automated modules for the production of 18FDG and 11C-methyl-iodide), a General Electric 1.5T Signa LX MR scanner, and a 3T General Electric Research MRI System.
The Center for Advanced Imaging is currently undergoing a major expansion that emphasizes human brain mapping using functional MRI (fMRI). The first phase of this expansion includes the installation of the 3T MRI system, and the new facility houses approximately 8,000 square feet of renovated office and laboratory space.
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Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Cardiovascular Sciences (CIRCS)
Investigators in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Cardiovascular Sciences are working to strengthen and unite basic, clinical and translational research in cardiovascular health and disease at WVU. A second and equally important mission is to provide first-rate training of pre- and postgraduate students, residents and fellows to produce the next generation of scholars in the cardiovascular sciences and in cardiovascular medicine.
The CIRCS is comprised of investigators who hold tenure-track appointments in eight different academic departments, and this cross-disciplinary nature provides an environment that is conducive to collaborative research and teaching. Our members are also committed to establishing collaborative links with other interdisciplinary research initiatives at WVU. Under the broad umbrella of cardiovascular research, the investigative activities of CIRCS faculty members are organized around the following themes: Angiogenesis and Vascular Development, The Endothelium and Vascular Control, Inflammation and Oxidative Stress, Lipid Metabolism and Gene Expression, and Hypertension and Aging.
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