Millions in funding for a UC San Diego program to recruit early-career researchers in the biomedical field has been renewed, officials announced Tuesday.
The Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program, funded through the National Institutes of Health Common Fund, began in 2022 and has allowed UCSD to hire 12 faculty in campus life sciences disciplines.
Those researchers collectively have brought in $16 million in new grants since their arrival, according to a statement from the university. The funding renewal totals $5 million.
“Despite the challenges we’ve faced in the last year related to federal funding, the FIRST program has been a great success,” said principal investigator JoAnn Trejo, a professor of pharmacology at UCSD School of Medicine and assistant vice chancellor of health sciences faculty affairs. “This cohort model of faculty recruitment provides a strong foundation of mentorship and early career development for faculty, and we look forward to continuing this important work.”
The FIRST program was canceled by NIH in early 2025 as part of a broad swath of federal spending cuts, but reinstated following a multi-state lawsuit.
According to UCSD, one of the key features of the program is its centralized search process for the new hires, which allowed for a “more streamlined and inclusive approach” to recruitment.
“This was a truly cross-campus search,” Trejo said. “We involved faculty from across the university, including medicine, pharmacy, engineering, biology, physical and social sciences, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This kind of interdisciplinary collaboration is a hallmark of UC San Diego, and it allowed us to identify and recruit talented faculty who can tackle complex biomedical challenges from multiple angles.”
The FIRST program has several initiatives under its umbrella beyond recruitment, including a grant writing course, mentorship training and a program to “build a more respectful scientific culture.”
“Addressing the world’s most complex health problems requires a wide range of experience, perspective and creative solutions, and we strive to follow this principle in our faculty recruitment,” said John Carethers, vice chancellor for health sciences.
Once the initial NIH grant is completed in 2027, Trejo said her goal is to institutionalize the programs developed through FIRST so they can become permanent parts of UCSD.
Several faculty members hired through FIRST said the experience has been “transformative.”
“As a new faculty member, you’re often the most junior person in a department, and it’s easy to feel isolated,” said Melissa Campbell, an assistant professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine. “Because we’re all in the same phase of our careers, it’s very different from being the lone junior hire. Here, we can talk openly about what we’re dealing with and help each other through challenges that are unique to this moment in science.”
Adrian Jinich, an assistant professor with a joint appointment in UCSD’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said the program has shaped his research group.
“I was the first person recruited through FIRST, and thanks to the support network and startup resources, I was able to hire my ideal senior research associate right away,” he said, adding that his team was also able to collaborate with campus researchers to build a computing cluster “that’s now central to our AI-driven infectious disease research. That infrastructure exists because of FIRST.”
