As a national leader in healthcare innovation, UC Irvine is creating world-class research programs like those that will soon find a home in the new Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building.
At 215,000 square feet, the building is slated to be the largest interdisciplinary discovery and translational research hub on the West Coast. Scheduled to open in 2025, it is made possible by the extraordinary generosity of Adeline Mah, MD, and Robert Mah, PhD, through their Falling Leaves Foundation.
The Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building is an embodiment of our collaborative One Health alliance, bringing together talent from across Health Affairs and attracting new recruits from around the globe. It will empower our clinicians and scientists to cure blindness, unlock breakthrough cancer treatments, revolutionize the treatment of neurological disorders, and harness genetics, proteomics and cutting-edge technologies to treat rare diseases and prevent common illnesses.
The 12 high-impact, interdisciplinary research programs that have been selected for the new building and adjacent space and the leaders who coordinated each submission and will serve as the founding program directors are as follows:
- Cancer Metabolism, Cellular Immuno-Oncology and Precision Oncology Research Programs
Richard Van Etten, MD, PhD - Center for Neural Circuit Mapping Translational Neuroscience Program
Xiangmin Xu, PhD - Center for Translational Vision Research
Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD - Environmental and Occupational Toxicology and Disease Program Laboratory
Andrea De Vizcaya Ruiz, PhD - Epilepsy Research Center
Robert Hunt, PhD - Genome Editing Research Program
Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD - Interdisciplinary Skin Science Program
Kristen Kelly, MD - Molecular Innovation Center
Andrej Luptak, PhD - Neurodegenerative Disease and Neurotherapeutics Collaboratory
Albert La Spada, MD, PhD - Precision Omics Collaboratory
Leslie Thompson, PhD - Program in Vaccines and Emerging Infectious Diseases
Philip Felgner, PhD - Stem Cell Neuroscience Research Program
Aileen Anderson, PhD
Each program is comprised of faculty members from multiple units within the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences (COHS), pursuant with our One Health strategic approach of leveraging the synergies of basic, translational and clinical investigators across health disciplines, as we already do in the UCI centers and institutes of health, and the UCI Health delivery system. This approach directs our Discover. Teach. Heal. mission and is empowered by the entirety of the knowledge and collaborative ethos of UC Irvine.
We have reached this key stage 24 months after the first call for faculty groups to submit innovative program proposals. That was followed by a second call allowing for revisions and new proposals. The result was an abundance of creative, high-quality submissions – many more than the space can accommodate. To guarantee rigor in the evaluation process, we engaged the expertise of internal senate faculty and external subject-matter specialists. The most highly ranked proposals were considered by the COHS deans and the AVCs for Integrative Health and Scientific Affairs who endorsed the programs listed above for their significant potential to transform the face of biomedical research, patient care and public health. Vice Chancellor Steve Goldstein, MD, PhD, FAAP, accepted the recommendations with pride in a process that reflected two hallmarks of UC Irvine: a spirit of collaboration and the firm conviction that faculty are the engine of groundbreaking ideas.
In a few weeks, the Health Affairs website will include pages describing the programs, current affiliated faculty, construction updates and fundraising opportunities. It will also showcase examples of how colocalization of the laboratories will amplify opportunities for unexpected discoveries, produce more effective tools to predict and prevent illness and treat disease, and elevate the wellbeing of communities and individuals in Orange County, across the state, and around the world.
