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IUPUI Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties Uday Sukhatme has announced the proposals to be funded under the Signature Center initiative. One of the 19 funded signature centers will be a joint venture between the schools of law, medicine and public and environmental affairs (SPEA), to be known as the Consortium for Health Policy, Law, Bioethics.

"This initiative is intended to take IUPUI's research effort to a much higher level by helping to create a significant number of Signature Centers which will stand out like skyscrapers over the surrounding landscape," Sukhatme said.

Such structures need support and the Signature Center initiative is designed to provide approximately $7 million of flexible money over the next three years (equally shared between the central administration and the academic units), he said.

The Consortium for Health Policy, Law, Bioethics creates an innovative and dynamic environment to facilitate research, education, and public policy service on issues in health care, health and science policy, and the life sciences. The consortium's mission is to provide an innovative, interdisciplinary organizational environment that enhances existing IUPUI/IU capacity in health policy, law and bioethics. The consortium strives to inform social and public policy in health, facilitate cross-cutting interdisciplinary research, and support current and developing degree and certificate programs.

Being designated as a signature center allows the Consortium to be seen as a distinctly identifiable research unit with IUPUI. In addition to representing an area of research strength, the signature center will usually build on some ongoing activities and have many of the following attributes:

Signature centers will often be interdisciplinary in character. They should have the capacity to attract significant external funding appropriate to the disciplines involved, including federal grants and foundation support. The centers need to bring academic distinction to the campus. After an initial period of campus-based seed funding, they should become largely self-sufficient in a 3 to 5 year time frame.

The work of the center should have something unique and distinctive, which makes it stand out. It should not focus on an area commonly studied at many other universities, although collaborations with other institutions could be a desirable feature.

The center should engage in work which takes advantage of the urban location in Indianapolis and establish partnerships with local community and cultural organizations.

A total of 71 proposals were submitted for review. They were judged on academic merit and the above described criteria for determining whether a proposal had the potential to reach Signature Center status. Other aspects, such as the scholarly track records of the faculty investigators and the planned use of budget, were also taken into consideration.

Submitted Proposals: The number of proposals coming from various schools were as follows: Medicine 21; Science, Engineering 8; Liberal Arts 7; Art, Dentistry, Informatics, Law 3; Public and Environmental Affairs, Social Work 2; Music, Nursing, Health and Rehabilitation Services, Education, University Library, University College, Business 1. Non-teaching units contributed 4 proposals.