Robert W Woodruff Health Sciences Center Fund

More than half of the annual funding distributed by the Woodruff Fund was designated to support the programs and facilities of the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University. Winship is Georgia's only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center. Woodruff Fund grants were used to recruit and retain faculty for dual appointments at Emory's medical school and the Winship Cancer Institute and to fund significant faculty research projects in cancer prevention, detection and treatment. More than one-third of the funds dedicated to support programs are used to support Winship's clinical trials program. Other significant allocations of program funds were made for information technology and data management, support of Winship's biostatistics and bioinformatics programs, and for supporting Winship's administration, shared resources, and its NCI cancer center support grant. Almost half of the distributions to Winship are allocated to pay for facilities.

The Woodruff Fund oversees three separate investment accounts intended to support development of two major capital projects in the Woodruff Health Sciences Center and growth in the research capacity for the Emory + Children's Pediatric Research Institute. In this fiscal year, the Fund disbursed $75,816,823 to support development of the second Health Sciences Research Building (HSRB II) on Emory's Clifton Road campus. HSRB II is a $288 million research facility which was substantially completed in November 2022. Separately, the Woodruff Fund disbursed $58,005,931 toward the second project, a cancer hospital adjacent to Emory Hospital Midtown. Completion of that project is expected in early 2023, with the first patient to be seen in the new facility expected in May 2023. The Woodruff Fund disbursed $7,010,100 in the fiscal year toward a multi-year plan to recruit pediatric investigators focused on childhood cancer, cardiac and brain medicine, Sickle Cell disease, and Cystic Fibrosis.

Woodruff Fund grants supported strategic academic and research initiatives in the medical institutions that make up Emory's Woodruff Health Sciences Center. Significant support during this fiscal year was directed to Emory's School of Medicine to support an innovation awards grant program and Basic Science Task Force; to Emory's Global Health Institute; and to support a new Brain Health Personalized Medicine Institute. A significant portion of the Woodruff Fund's support was also used to sustain a "Synergy Awards" program designed to encourage collaborative investigations across the Health Sciences Center's institutions. Additional support was provided for strategic investments in Emory's Rollins School of Public Health; the Yerkes Primate Research Center; the Georgia Clinical and Translational Sciences Alliance; and Emory's Immunology and Vaccine Research Center. A significant portion of the distributions to Emory's Woodruff Health Sciences Center are used to pay for facilities, including Emory's biomedical research facilities and School of Medicine building.