An oral Hepatitis B vaccination and cartilage repair for those who suffer from arthritis are a few Cal Poly research projects being funded by President Obama’s stimulus plan.
The university has received more than half a million dollars from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a result of the $1 trillion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — commonly known as the stimulus package.
Congresswoman Lois Capps visited campus last week to hear first-hand reports from faculty and students about how the money is advancing Cal Poly medical projects.
“Investing in healthcare research will help cure life-threatening diseases and increase good-paying jobs along the way,” Capps said to an audience of about 25 students, faculty and members of the media.
Although Capps’ office organized the press conference, she said wasn’t there to talk, but to listen. She sat in the front row while professors spoke, then walked down the aisle asking questions to individual students.
“I know what it’s like to be in Washington, D.C. saying, ‘How can we get this economy going again?’ … Being at home, being with constituents, you get the message that things are not right,” Capps said.
So, she came to Cal Poly to hear about the benefits of the stimulus.
Biological sciences instructor Kenneth Hillers is using money from a $210,000 grant to study “comparative and functional proteomics of germline chromatin in celegans.” Put simply, he and his students are studying how chromosomes are spread from one generation to the next.
The grant allows Hillers to buy necessary equipment, financially support students engaged in research and enhance student training.
“Particularly what I’m interested in is training undergraduates to do biomedical research in order to enable them to go on and get good jobs in high-tech areas,” Hillers said.
Hillers’ $210,000 grant was the largest received by a Cal Poly group as a result of the stimulus package.
“The timing is really nice,” Hillers said. “Because, obviously, given the financial situation in California, the funding for the CSU system is being slashed and that’s going to have an impact on the experience that the students have.”
The financial crisis is a $584 million deficit that may force the CSU to raise student fees by up to 20 percent and require two-day faculty furloughs each month in 2009-10.
Mechanical engineering professor Stephen Klisch and biomedical engineering instructor Scott Hazelwood are using a $33,824 grant for a project that focuses on cartilage growth in biomechanics. The goal is to develop engineering strategies for the repair of tissue damaged by arthritis.
Arthritis is the leading cost of disability in the United States, Klisch said. The direct medical cost of arthritis and related conditions was about $81 billion in 2003. Klisch said there are also indirect costs like economic productivity lost from people suffering from arthritis.
“This kind of work may help to greatly reduce healthcare costs in the future,” Klisch said.
The $33,834 supplements a $210,000 parent grant Klisch’s project has received for the past three years from the NIH. The $33,834 is being used to provide summer internships for four undergraduate students, pay for travel expenses to an academic conference and advance research for the cartilage regrowth project.
Klisch’s group plans to attend the Biomedical Engineering Society meeting this fall in Pittsburgh if they can put together an abstract for the project before July 31.
Creating jobs through the multiplier effect
By using money from the stimulus package, Cal Poly is creating jobs for students, the community and eventually, the world, Capps said.
Although she couldn’t put a number on the of new jobs created, she said the multiplier effect is huge. Cal Poly is just the start to a chain of jobs to be created in the future.
First, students are hired to research a project; then, more faculty are hired as the research grows. When the findings are eventually released, billions of dollars and jobs go into making it a reality.
John Howard, the founder and president of Applied Biotechnology Institute — which works with Cal Poly students to conduct research on campus — said that for every one person Cal Poly hires, around 1,000 jobs are created down the line.
Klisch’s four summer interns, for example, will be in San Luis Obispo this summer and contribute to local business and real estate.
Small business, not medical research, will help economy
Brian Klotz, the press secretary for Representative Kevin McCarthy — who represents the district from Bakersfield to Atascadero — said there is a better way to generate jobs.
Although Cal Poly is a “premier university” and its research projects “push the envelope in needed research and development,” the stimulus package isn’t the most efficient solution, he said.
“With unemployment continuing to rise, our priority needs to be to improve the small business climate throughout our nation to create permanent jobs and turn our economy around,” Klotz said in a statement.
“Helping small businesses — that create 70 percent of our nation’s jobs — is imperative to create employment opportunities for Cal Poly graduates and long-term jobs Californians desperately need during times of double digit unemployment.”