Veterinary college nearly doubles National Institutes of Health funding, climbs to No. 13 nationally
By nearly doubling National Institutes of Health funding from $3.8 million to $7.5 million, the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine rose five positions to No. 13 nationally among veterinary schools, according to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.
The leap capped an eight-year climb from No. 24, a trajectory that began in 2018 when Margie Lee '82, DVM '86 became head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology. Lee served in this role until 2024, when Ira Blader succeeded her and accelerated the upward progress.
"This is a great report on the college," said Blader. "I knew we were doing well. I didn't think almost doubling was even possible."
The result arrived against a significant headwind. Federal research funding has contracted broadly, and Virginia Tech has not been insulated from those pressures. The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research's 2025 analysis found that the number of funded principal investigators nationwide fell 4.2 percent, leaving 991 fewer researchers receiving National Institutes of Health (NIH) support. Among veterinary schools, total disbursements declined nearly 3 percent. The veterinary college's increase ran counter to all of it.
Building the foundation
When Lee, now the college's associate dean for research and graduate studies and director of the Biomedical and Veterinary Sciences Graduate Program, arrived as department head in 2018, she pulled the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research rankings, counted research faculty at peer schools, and cross-referenced NIH funding data. The college had enough research positions on paper. The problem was how those positions were being used.
"It was in little pieces," Lee said. "This person's point-two, this person's point-one. We had few positions that were heavy research. You can't build a business putting 40 percent of your time into it."
She reallocated faculty workload based on research potential, freeing investigators who had been buried under clinical or teaching loads. Lab renovations were handled centrally. Administrative tasks moved back to the department level. Grant submissions went up.
Her recruiting strategy was deliberate. Rather than hiring only for credentials, she looked for researchers who would use the college's clinics, diagnostic lab, and animal facilities as resources for their work. When an endowed professorship in bacteriology opened, she used it to recruit Mohamed Seleem, who brought a broader infectious disease focus to the department.
She also invested in three research areas she judged would hold their funding regardless of federal budget cycles.
"Infectious diseases, neuroscience, and cancer are fields that always have funding," Lee said. "That's why we invested there."
A financial decision by college leadership amplified the effect. When the college paid off a major capital debt, the administration restructured the distribution of indirect cost recovery, returning half of the overhead generated by each department's grants to department heads. That gave Lee — and later her successors — capital to solve problems in real time: broken equipment, bridge funding between grants, technician hires for faculty on the verge of a breakthrough.
"A lot of what you see in those numbers came out of that financial decision," Lee said.
Lee has since cut two service centers that were costing more than they returned and hired a dedicated research operations specialist to keep equipment running across the college.
Raising the bar
When Blader arrived in 2024, he pushed the department toward larger, longer grants — five-year awards that give investigators the stability to pursue more ambitious science.
"When you have that stability, it gives you more freedom of thought," Blader said. "On a one- or two-year grant, it's product-delivery oriented. With longer funding, you have the buffer to change direction — and sometimes pivoting takes years."
He also invested in grantsmanship, bringing in senior faculty to mentor junior investigators on writing competitive proposals. The college recently added a grants specialist with doctoral-level scientific training to provide pre-award support.
Lee sees the sequence as intentional. "First, we had to figure out who we had to hire to get the NIH funding," she said. "Now the bar has moved. If you've been successful with the smaller grants, you can now go for larger program grants. That's the next step."
A broad portfolio
The results reflect the college's structure, which integrates veterinary medicine, biomedical sciences, and public health programs under one roof. Faculty in the Department of Population Health Sciences contributed to fiscal year 2025 totals — research that at most peer institutions would be housed in a separate school.
Virginia Tech's dual-career hiring program has been a catalyst.
Infectious disease researcher Kirsten Nielsen, recruited through a spousal hire, has become one of the college's most-funded investigators while also running grant workshops and mentoring faculty across the university.
"If a provost or a president ever wants to ask, 'Is this program successful?' I'd point to Kirsten Nielsen first and foremost," Blader said. "The return on that investment has been huge."
Dean M. Daniel Givens credited the result to sustained institutional commitment across multiple years and multiple teams.
"Nearly doubling our NIH funding in a single year is something I wouldn't have predicted, but it didn't happen overnight," Givens said. "Margie Lee spent five years building infrastructure and recruiting key faculty. Ira Blader brought new energy and expectations to the team last year. All of this was possible thanks to Virginia Tech's support for dual-career hiring and our business team's operational investments. This is a college-wide achievement."
What comes next
Lee's vision for the next chapter centers on comparative medicine — the idea that veterinary and biomedical research can illuminate human health in ways neither field achieves alone. She recruited researchers who were open to working with clinicians, and collaborative grants are beginning to reflect that.
"As a veterinary college, we do comparative medicine," Lee said. "I sought researchers willing to collaborate with clinicians."
Blader traced the results to an institutional decision made years before this year's numbers arrived.
"This is because we decided, as an institution, we're going to do this, and it required bringing in the right people," he said. "It was the vision — the dean, the associate deans, the department heads — really saying, our research is not where we want it. And now we're working to change that."
"Our junior faculty are just beginning to secure their funding," Blader said. "So this is only going to go up. I don't actually know where our ceiling is, but I'm excited to find out."
