Message from the Executive VP

What drives us? The desire to move forward.

Jonathan Lewin, executive VP for health affairs, executive director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and president, CEO, and board chair of Emory Healthcare.

Emory University investigators received $734 million ($686 million of this total was awarded to Woodruff Health Sciences Center researchers) in external research funding last year, an increase of 17 percent from the previous year.

This funding doesn’t sit dormant. It serves as a catalyst, producing lifesaving treatments and innovations and transforming the way we prevent, detect, and treat disease. The recently inaugurated “synergy awards” support cross-disciplinary projects among faculty at our schools of medicine, nursing, and public health, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and more. Projects include developing biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders (medicine/public health), improving imaging for stroke patients (medicine/Yerkes), and exploring how shiftwork impacts the microbiome (nursing/medicine).

This issue of Emory Health Digest highlights research as well, from Emory doctors at Grady investigating ways to make driving safer, to immunologists working on a universal flu vaccine, to a radiologist aiming to combat obesity by freezing the “hunger nerve.”

Some call it a research pipeline. I like to think of it as a research river, ever flowing, with untapped power and unlimited potential.

Be well,

Jon Lewin

evphafeedback@emory.edu