Roman Reed Program
The Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research funds are used to launch unique, creative research projects by faculty throughout the UC system and the state of California. The program provides seed funds for highly innovative projects that offer the promise of eventually leading to new federal and alternative funding. The grant recipients, along with other spinal cord injury / neural regeneration researchers from California, meet each year to discuss ways of cooperating, communicating and collaborating, thereby significantly improving the caliber and quantity of spinal cord injury research undertaken in the state of California.
A second portion of the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act funds go towards the Roman Reed Core Laboratory, sited within the Reeve Irvine Research Center of the University of California at Irvine. The Core allows for the rapid translation of ideas into research, by making it possible for any scientist with a novel idea to immediately undertake experiments in well-developed animal models. The Core Laboratory has state-of-the-art equipment, animal facilities, dedicated laboratory space, and trained technical personnel dedicated to spinal cord injury research. This type of Core Laboratory for "fast-tracking" targeted research is without parallel, and indeed has become a model for others. The Core Laboratory was dedicated "The Roman Reed Laboratory for Spinal Cord Injury Research" on March 1, 2002 in a ceremony marked in the United States Congressional Record.
