Lilly Endowment gives IU $53 million grant

The Lilly Endowment gave IU-Bloomington an early Christmas present Dec. 16 -- a grant for $53 million to fund the new Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative (METACyt), the largest the campus has ever received. \nMETACyt will focus on the research of metabolism and the inner workings of cells. \n"The largest goal of all this is the understanding of how a cell works," said Ted Widlanski, Associate Dean for Research and Infrastructure of the College of Arts and Sciences and the new CEO of METACyt. "If you understand how a cell works, you can understand how it can break down."\nWidlanski said the impacts of the grant are enormous. He said because of the new money, IU will hire between 100 and 150 new scientists. He said hundreds more would benefit from and use the new facilities on campus. \n"It's going to enable us to build up substantial new facilities and programs," said Michael McRobbie, the vice president for research, vice-president for information technology and chief information officer. "This campus has been struggling to keep up with the kinds of scientific infrastructure that you need to be competitive in the life sciences."\nWidlanski said a grant of this size will also benefit not just the sciences but the University at large.\n"Money makes money," he said. "And this will enable us to get a lot more money from the government."\nHe said grant money allows the University to increase its revenue while helping to keep tuition increases at a minimum. \nWidlanski said the grant will help the community.\n"It's often said that for every million dollars of funding we bring in, we create 50 jobs," he said. "Three hundred to 500 jobs will be created because of this grant. That's a huge economic impact on a town the size of Bloomington."\nSara Cobb, the vice president of education at the Lilly Endowment said, at a Dec. 16 press conference announcing the grant, that METACyt will help further the goals of the Lilly Endowment.\n"This bold, forward-looking METACyt initiative will significantly advance the Endowment's efforts to build the intellectual capital in our state, which we believe is so vital to the future prosperity of Indiana," she said. \nThe Lilly Endowment was founded in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family. The endowment's priorities are education, religion, and community development in Indiana. Since 1958, it has given IU nearly $448 million. In October, the Endowment gave IU $26 million for the recruitment and retainment of intellectual capital in Indiana. In 2000, the medical school in Indianapolis received nearly $105 million for the Indiana Genomics Initiative.\nIncreasing the number of Hoosiers with a college degree is a top priority for the Lilly Endowment, said Gretchen Wolfram, communications director for the Lilly Endowment. \n"Right now we stand between 43rd and 48th in the country," she said. "This will not suffice in the future."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Michael Zennie at mzennie@indiana.edu.