Research Overview 
The UNM School of Medicine has been exploring ways to improve human health through biomedical research and population health research since its founding nearly 50 years ago. Faculty members conduct a broad range of research, from cell- and animal-based laboratory studies to population health and community-engaged clinical investigations.
SOM Research Development Network
Do you engage in research development activities? Not sure if you do, but want to learn more and/or network with other research professionals in the School of Medicine? Please sign-up for the SOM Research Development Network sponsored by the SOM Research Office.
SOM Research Development Network (Smartsheet)
Cutting-Edge Research
The research interests of the school's 950 faculty members are closely aligned with the Health Sciences Center's six signature programs:
- Brain and Behavioral Health
- Cancer
- Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease
- Child Health
- Environmental Health Services
- Infectious Diseases and Immunity
Explore the wide range of research projects in individual departments, centers and institutes.
Research that Improves Health
Interdisciplinary teams conduct research that has substantially improved health in New Mexico and throughout the world. Our scientists focus on:
- Population health
- Comparative effectiveness research
- Advanced microscopy
- Molecular screening for drugs
- Data science and informatics
- Neurosciences
- Immunology
- Cell biology
Addressing New Mexico's Needs
Faculty members regularly collaborate with our major centers, UNM's Clinical and Translational Science Center and the Comprehensive Cancer Center, as well as our programs in:
- Spatiotemporal modeling
- Human papillomavirus research
- Project ECHO
- Numerous neurosciences programs and others
This flexible, focused approach addresses New Mexico's unique multicultural health needs while making significant contributions to improving global human health.
The School of Medicine is thus well-positioned to compete for and conduct biomedical and population health research studies to improve the health and quality of life for all.
IDG Consortium
The Illuminating the Druggable Genome (IDG) Knowledge Management Center (KMC) is an integral part of the IDG Consortium, funded by the NIH Common Fund to shed light on understudied human proteins. The IDG KMC, housed in the UNM HSC Translational Informatics Division, develops, maintains and updates two major open-access, open-science resources: Pharos, a knowledge portal for proteins, diseases and ligands that aggregates over 60 resources, and DrugCentral, an on-line drug compendium that captures critical information for approved medicines. The IDG KMC also develops a wide range of open-access digital services: TIGA, Target Illumination GWAS Analytics; Exfiles, gene expression profiles analytis for sexual dimorphism; TIN-X, a disease-protein associations explorer; BADAPPLE, a compound promiscuity detection algorithm for chemical biology; and a Druglikeness tool to compute drug-like probability from molecular fragments. Further information about on-going projects is available at the UNM HSC Translational Informatics Division website.