By ALLISSA KLINE
akline@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1612

Ask Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter about the local impact of federal stimulus funds and she'll tell you about the launch of a research project to identify colorectal cancer in urban communities.

She'll outline the evolution of the project, a joint effort with Jericho Road Ministries and the pilot screening program that involved 40 patients at three separate medical sites. She also might discuss the new educational material she has prepared or the research assistants and community health educators she's hired.

Her project, Patient Voices to Improve Primary Care, is supported by $1.04 million in federal stimulus grant monies awarded nearly two years ago as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But the end is near for the project because the grant runs out this month.

"Funding for this type of work is not easy to get, so the ARRA funding helped a lot," said Tumiel-Berhalter, an associate professor of family medicine and vice chair of research for the department of family medicine at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. "Now that we have the pilot (program) under our belts, we should be able to get more funding to keep going."

UB is the leading recipient of ARRA funding among Western New York colleges and universities, according to a Business First review of stimulus money designated to local higher-education institutions. At UB, a vast majority of the funding was awarded as research grants from federal agencies. In fact, UB received 111 research-related awards totaling $38.8 million as of April 30, according to data from the SUNY Research Foundation.

Some of the grant money was used to buy new research equipment and some was used to support research endeavors such as Tumiel-Berhalter's, said Elizabeth Smith, UB's assistant vice president for administration and planning.

"We viewed this as accelerated seed funding," Smith said. "It enabled faculty to get funding for research, to hire graduate students and to do research to advance science. It has put (researchers) in stronger positions to submit additional (research) proposals in the future."

No other college or university in the region came close to securing as many ARRA awards or stimulus dollars as UB. Buffalo State College was awarded two research grants, including one in conjunction with Syracuse University, that total $1.06 million, the SUNY Research Foundation said.