The UC Davis Cancer Center and the NEAT (Nanophases in the Environment, Agriculture and Techonology) program have been awarded organized research unit status, making a total of 13 such units campuswide.

"The Cancer Center and the NEAT initiative have been a credit to our campus," Provost Virginia Hinshaw said. "I am very pleased to have them both now established as organized research units."

The research units are approved by the chancellor and reviewed every five years. Current ORUs at UC Davis study subjects ranging from marine biology (Bodega Marine Laboratory) to transportation (Institute of Transportation Studies) or politics, social sciences and law (Institute of Governmental Affairs). They are established to run collaborative research programs that cross boundaries between disciplines and cannot readily fit within a single department.

The Cancer Center is only the second ORU within the School of Medicine. With the new status comes a $67,000 allocation from the provost's office for the 2002-03 academic year.

On July 2, the cancer center announced it had achieved National Cancer Institute designation, becoming the only such center between San Francisco and Portland, Ore. The designation brings with it a $1.2 million grant for each of the next three years.

"Just as National Cancer Institute designation was a critical form of external recognition, ORU status is a valued form of internal recognition," said Ralph deVere White, professor of urology and director of the cancer center. "ORU status recognizes the multidisciplinary nature of our patient care, teaching, and research efforts."

The Cancer Center was formed in the mid-1980s by the merger of the divisions of hematology-oncology, radiation oncology and surgical oncology. Today the cancer center coordinates the work of more than 200 scientists representing more than a dozen disciplines at the medical center, on the Davis campus and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

As an ORU, the cancer center will expand the scope, depth and scientific productivity of its six major program areas: molecular oncology; cancer biology in animals; cancer therapeutics; cancer etiology, prevention and control; prostate cancer; and biomedical technologies. The center will also promote undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral education through forums, information exchange and small "seed money" research grants.

Founded five years ago, the NEAT program links together researchers studying nanomaterials made up of very small particles just a few atoms across. Because of their small size, these materials can have unusual properties and readily interact with living things. That makes them important in areas as varied as electrical engineering, health and the environment.

The NEAT program has worked to recruit nanoscience researchers to the faculty, train graduate students through the NEAT-IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education, Research, and Training) grant funded by the National Science Foundation, and raise the profile and funding of nanoscience research on campus, said Alexandra Navrotsky, director of the program and of the new ORU. The new status will centralize administrative support for NEAT, aid in preparing and administering collaborative research proposals and provide a forum for discussions, seminars and increased collaboration, she said.

"ORU status provides more support to go for these funding opportunities. When you write a collaborative proposal, even if it doesn't get funded, you don't go back to square one. You can build on that experience," she said.

Navrotsky expects the NEAT ORU to grow rapidly over the next five years, particularly in the areas of environmental science, agriculture, biological sciences, engineering and materials science.

NEAT would also develop new partnerships with other research units such as the John Muir Institute of the Environment, the new Graduate School of the Environment, as well as with other universities and federal laboratories such as the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories.