Photo / Courtesy, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory
MDI Bio Lab is situated on a campus of more than 100 acres in the Bar Harbor village of Salsbury Cove.
August 14, 2024
With $19.4M in new funding, Maine biomed research network will prepare future scientists
Photo / Courtesy, MDI Bio Lab
MDI Bio Lab's president, Hermann Haller, speaks in Bar Harbor at Tuesday's announcement of new funding for the Maine INBRE.
By William Hall
MDI Biological Laboratory and a network of other Maine biomedical research institutions will receive $19.4 million in federal funding to expand their work and to help prepare future scientists throughout the state.
The Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, led by Bar Harbor-based MDI Bio Lab, provides training, research experience and financial support for students and young researchers. Announced Tuesday, the money from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences renews the network's funding for five years and allows the Maine INBRE to add three member institutions.
The new members are the University of Southern Maine, the MaineHealth Institute for Research, and the University of Maine at Augusta. The network already includes the University of Maine; UMaine Honors College; UMaine System campuses in Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Farmington and Machias; Southern Maine Community College; College of the Atlantic, the University of New England; Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges; the Jackson Laboratory and MDI Bio Lab.
The award is the federal government's sixth consecutive renewal of the Maine INBRE program, and brings the total awarded to the network to $106 million in federal funding and more than $110 in additional grants.
Over the past two decades, the program has provided more than 2,600 Maine students with hands-on biomedical research experience, according to MDI Bio Lab. Of those students, 90% have gone on to pursue advanced education and careers in medical and other scientific fields, and 21% have done so in Maine.
In addition, the Maine INBRE has directly invested more than $87 million in the state, with early-career faculty supported by the program winning over $100 million more in other research grants.
"In a state like Maine with a small population and a vast geography, it’s our willingness to work together that makes us competitive in the global biomedical world, that helps us to punch above our weight," said MDI Bio Lab's president, Hermann Haller, in a news release.
"The Maine INBRE is our connective tissue, an extraordinarily collaborative network that is significantly raising the biomedical research and training capacity of the entire state."
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, "You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, or Boston to make a difference. Remarkable research is taking place right here in Maine, and the Maine INBRE is helping to make it possible.”
The Maine INBRE is one of many similar networks across the U.S., all of which receive federal funds. The INBRE networks part are of the National Institutes of Health's Institutional Development Award program, which was created by Congress to build research capacity in states that historically have had low levels of NIH funding.
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