Research at VCU

Generating more than $206 million a year in medical sponsored research, VCU Medical Center offers patients the opportunity to choose to participate in programs that advance evolving treatment. The medical school accounts for almost half of VCU’s sponsored research awards and for 87 percent of the university’s NIH funding. Recently, the school unveiled a more-than-$300-million Strategic Plan for Research. A roadmap for enhancing the school’s research capabilities, the plan calls for an infusion of human capital and physical infrastructure that will invigorate a culture of scientific discovery. The School of Medicine is embarking on an ambitious program of expansion of its basic and clinical research that will include the hiring of 102 new research-intensive faculty members, the funding of 80 new graduate students, the construction of over 200,000 net square feet of new research laboratories, and renovation of additional laboratory space over the next 3 years.

Women's Health Research at VCU

The Institute for Women’s Health provides leadership in the development, enhancement, and promotion of women’s health research at Virginia Commonwealth University. We initiate and support innovative studies on women’s health with a special focus on gender-based analysis working to translate findings into practice. Significant improvements in health care can be made when innovative, collaborative research knowledge is translated into medical and personal practice.

Promoting research and scholarship, the Institute facilitates interdisciplinary and collaborative research in women's health by:

1) Building and sustaining a successful women’s health research program;
2) Initiating, coordinating, supporting, and tracking faculty and IWH efforts to seek extramural research funding in women’s health;
3) Fostering collaborations among VCU faculty from across the university through meetings, presentations and information dissemination activities designed to improve the competitiveness of VCU researchers in women’s health research;
4) Assisting in the identification of both federal and private funding opportunities that match with faculty expertise;
5) Maintaining ongoing mechanisms related to analysis of strengths and weaknesses of women’s health research expertise across the university;
6) Facilitating and coordinating initiatives in interdisciplinary women’s health proposal development; and
7) Fostering an enhanced institutional environment for women’s health investigators and trainees.

VCU has particular research strengths in the areas of psychiatric and behavioral genetics, drug and alcohol abuse, cancer, reproductive health, and aging; interdisciplinary programs of research exist in each of these areas. VCU researchers conduct many clinical trials at the Women’s Health Center at Stony Point and in the women’s health clinics at the VCU Medical Center.

Director of Research:
Robert W. Downs, M.D., Professor, Department of Internal Medicine

Virginia Commonwealth University has established the Center for Clinical and Translational Research
to enhance the research infrastructure and promote collaboration.
For more information click here