grants – UofL News

UofL, UofL Health receive funding from WHAS Crusade for Children to transform lives

Matt Willinger — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 19:32:00 +0000

The University of Louisville, UofL Health and the WHAS Crusade for Children are celebrating a powerful and enduring partnership that has transformed the lives of children and families across Kentucky for more than three decades.

Since its inception, the WHAS Crusade for Children has provided nearly $20 million in grant support to UofL and , fueling groundbreaking research, innovative education and expanded access to high-quality care for children with special needs.

This year, that legacy of generosity continues with more than $325,000 in new awards supporting programs and equipment that directly improve the lives of children and their families:

$200,000 for new equipment in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
$50,000 for equipment at
$22,500 for equipment in the
$30,000 to support the UofL
$22,000 for special education scholarships in UofL’s

This support has touched nearly every corner of the university — from classrooms to clinics, and from local outreach programs to statewide initiatives — making a lasting impact on Kentucky’s most vulnerable children and their families.

“On behalf of the University of Louisville, I extend heartfelt thanks to the WHAS Crusade for Children for their extraordinary generosity and decades of unwavering support,” said Jeffrey Bumpous, UofL executive vice president of health affairs and medical school dean. “Together, we are transforming lives, strengthening families and building a brighter future for children throughout the commonwealth.”

The latest investment from the Crusade will further elevate UofL and UofL Health’s ability to educate the next generation of health professionals and expand innovative care to more children and families in need.

“The partnership between the WHAS Crusade for Children and the University of Louisville is proof that this community’s generosity truly changes lives,” said Dawn Lee, president and CEO of WHAS Crusade for Children. “UofL continues to transform grants into care, research and education that make life better for children with identified needs. This legacy has opened doors for generations of children, and the best is yet to come.”

For more than 30 years, the partnership has not only brought critical resources to special needs children, but has also helped advance UofL’s and UofL Health’s missions of improving the quality of life for the communities they serve.

“This enduring partnership demonstrates the power of philanthropy and collaboration,” said UofL Health Interim CEO Jason Smith. “From education and research to compassionate, hands-on care, the WHAS Crusade for Children’s generosity has improved lives across the Commonwealth.”

UofL brings in highest amount of research funding since 2012

Mark Hebert — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 18:37:52 +0000

The University of Louisville recently completed its most successful year securing funding for research since 2012. UofL research on everything from gum disease to e-cigarettes, robots to sexual assault investigations was funded by grants to UofL faculty in 2018-19.

“This is great news for our community and those touched by UofL’s research in medicine, education, engineering, art and countless other disciplines,” said Dr. Robert S. Keynton, UofL’s interim executive vice president for research and innovation. “Our faculty work tirelessly to secure the funding needed to explore, test and translate that research, so it can change, improve and even save lives.”

Preliminary numbers from Keynton’s office show UofL faculty received more than $152 million in competitive awards last fiscal year, an increase of $14 million over the previous year.

Among the projects receiving grants:

$18.1 million/5 years from the National Institutes of Health for a biomedical research center. Professor Nigel Cooper in Anatomical Science/Neurobiology runs the center which includes building a capacity for bioinformatics to serve the needs of genomics researchers at universities across the state.
$1.5 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a small additive manufacturing platform using microrobots and 3D printing. Speed School of Engineering professor Dan Popa secured the grant. Popa directs the Next Generation Systems robotics lab.
$1.5 million from the Kentucky Department of ��ֱ�� to support systems for improving students’ academic and behavioral (disciplinary) outcomes in every Kentucky school district. College of ��ֱ�� and Human Development faculty Terry Scott received the grant.

UofL faculty received a preliminary total of 950 grants from federal and state government as well as private sources in 2018-19.

Pediatrics research team awarded more than $1.6 million by NIH

Jill Scoggins — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 18:03:41 +0000

The National Institutes of Health this week announced a team of researchers headed by Janice Sullivan, MD, of the University of Louisville Department of Pediatrics, is among grant recipients nationwide receiving funding for a 7-year, multicenter initiative called . The ECHO program will investigate how exposure to a range of environmental factors in early development influences the health of children and adolescents.

Sullivan is the chief and medical director of the Kosair Charities Pediatric Clinical Research Unit in UofL’s Department of Pediatrics. The UofL award totals $1,673,259 to fund a multiple investigator team program titled “The Kentucky Pediatric Clinical Trials Rural/Urban Partnership.”

“Our team of experienced pediatric clinician-investigators and clinical trial specialists is excited to expand our participation in collaborative multicenter studies that can identify the environmental origins of pediatric diseases and test therapies to treat and prevent disease,” said Department of Pediatrics Vice Chair for Research Brad Keller, MD. “The research funding announced today will help us continue to find the cures of tomorrow, enabling children in Kentucky, Southern Indiana and beyond to live longer, healthier lives.”

The ECHO program will investigate environmental exposures from conception through early childhood. Experiences during sensitive developmental windows – around the time of conception, later in pregnancy and during infancy and early childhood – can have long-lasting effects on the health of children. These experiences encompass a broad range of exposures, from air pollution and chemicals found in neighborhoods, to societal factors such as stress, to individual behaviors like sleep and diet. They may act through any number of biological processes, for example changes in the expression of genes or development of the immune system.

A critical component of ECHO will be to use the NIH-funded to build state-of-the art pediatric clinical research networks in rural and medically-underserved areas so that children from these communities can participate in clinical trials. Sullivan’s award falls in this category.

The awards announced will build the infrastructure and capacity for the ECHO program to support multiple, synergistic longitudinal studies that extend and expand existing cohort studies of mothers and their children. ECHO research will focus on factors that may influence health outcomes around the time of birth as well as into later childhood and adolescence, including upper and lower airway health and development, obesity and brain and nervous system development.

“Every baby should have the best opportunity to remain healthy and thrive throughout childhood,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. “ECHO will help us better understand the factors that contribute to optimal health in children.”

For complete details about the ECHO program, see the .