The medical school has entered the first phase of a $375 million initiative, funded in part by NYSUNY 2020 legislation, to relocate downtown to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Our move will place us in close proximity to the university’s health care partners on the medical campus, creating an environment that produces better care, new forms of care, and an economic boost that can lift the entire region.

Our new medical school will connect to nearby hospitals and research facilities via sky bridges, creating a vibrant environment to support growth into the next century. This setting will facilitate collaboration and interdisciplinary care as students, faculty, biomedical researchers and clinicians move easily from classroom to bedside to lab.

Moving downtown will maximize our school’s benefits for the region and for medical education.

Physician shortages across the U.S. are projected to become acute by 2020. In Buffalo—with our comparatively large aging population and the attendant high burden of chronic disease—we’re already seeing trends the rest of the country can expect as the baby boom generation begins to enter old age. The University at Buffalo and its School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences will play a key role in meeting these challenges at home and contributing to national solutions.

UB will add 100 new faculty positions to the medical school between now and 2016. These physicians and researchers will increase our medical education capacity, open new avenues of research and improve the depth and breadth of clinical coverage in Western New York. In addition, they will permit us to add training programs in medical specialties that require more physicians to meet the region’s needs.

Currently, our school admits 140 new MD students per year. We will be able to raise this number to 180, graduating 40 more physicians per year by 2020. Expanding our specialty programs will encourage more of our graduates to stay in Buffalo to train and practice here afterward. Together with hiring initiatives to attract more clinical faculty to the school, this will address the region’s projected physician shortage.

Recruiting more world-class clinician-scientists will strengthen our ongoing research initiatives and open new areas of investigation for our highly interdisciplinary research community. Buffalo will be a powerhouse of clinical research: a place that produces new treatments and trains outstanding clinician-scientists in a rich environment for discovery.

UB’s new Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) puts laboratories for clinician-scientists steps away from the operating theaters and hospital beds where clinical care is delivered. The Buffalo Translational Consortium, a partnership formed around the new research opportunities the CTRC makes available, coordinates clinical and translational research programs at member institutions and shares core research facilities.