Research Strategy & Advancement
Dr. Dele Davies has over 40 years of research experience, serving as a primary investigator, research director, department chair, senior vice chancellor and interim chancellor. Throughout all levels, he has focused on sustained research growth and industry engagement.
Select Accomplishments at UNMC (2012 - 2026)
Working alongside dedicated teams, Dr. Dele Davies led the strategy and delivery of multiple initiatives across UNMC.
Launched the new UNMC Office of Industry Engagement, leading to a more coordinated approach for how UNMC interacts with the biomedical research industry and growing research dollars.
Drove growth in PhD graduates that enabled UNMC to qualify for and earn R1 Carnegie Classification, recognizing UNMC as a top-tier research and doctoral university.
Strengthened UNMC’s research resilience amid shifting federal funding by supporting the expansion of industry grants/contracts and industry-sponsored clinical trials, driving a 70%+ increase in industry research funding last fiscal year.
Empowered and incentivized graduate faculty to expand their grant writing, leading to the number of national institutional training grants awarded to UNMC increasing from 1 NIH-funded T32 award (Cancer Research) to 9 awards, including 6 NIH T32 awards, 2 R25 awards and 1 US Department of Education GAANN Award, which expanded the number of students supported from 4 to 36 and totaled more than $10 million, while expanding world-class research training for graduate students.
Established and incentivized the Graduate Students of Distinction awards program, leading to 100+ individual national awards received by graduate students, including from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, and other national or professional society awards.
Personal Research Impact
Dr. Dele Davies is an internationally recognized leader in perinatal and Group A/B streptococcal infections, whose work helped lay the groundwork for future GBS vaccines. Across his career, he has secured $28M+ in research and pipeline funding (as PI/co-PI/co-investigator), published 250+ peer-reviewed papers, and advanced child health research.
Dr. Davies was named one of the top 2% of researchers in his field by a Stanford University study based on citation metrics that measure researchers’ global impact.
While at UNMC he helped lay the foundation and shepherded the Board of Regents’ approval for UNMC’s Child Health Research Institute (CHRI), an innovative UNMC-Children’s Nebraska partnership advancing pediatric discovery and translating research into new tests and treatments to improve child health.
At Michigan State University, Dr. Davies was a founding member of the Michigan Alliance for the National Children’s Study, a coalition of scientists who worked together to collaborate ahead of funding and initiation of the proposed National Children’s Study. The study had been funded to study the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of more than 100,000 children across the US from before birth to age 21.
At the University of Calgary, Dr. Davies served as director of the Child Health Research Unit. There, he developed programs and worked with the department chair to hire high-quality researchers that paved the way for the current Child Health Research Institute, now one of the premier pediatric research units in Canada.