Facts and Accomplishments

Facts

• The University of Rochester Medical Center is one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. It forms the centerpiece of the University of Rochester’s education, health research, and patient care missions.
• The Medical Center comprises the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the region’s only healthcare network powered by an academic research center, transforming medicine and advancing care throughout the communities we serve.
• Our healthcare network includes eight hospitals, a medical faculty group, extensive outpatient services, long-term care facilities, home care, and Eastman Dental. The network’s flagship teaching hospital, Strong Memorial Hospital, encompasses Golisano Children’s Hospital, Wilmot Cancer Institute, Flaum Eye Institute, and Strong West.
• Strong Memorial Hospital is among an elite group of U.S. hospitals earning five consecutive Magnet designations for nursing excellence. Fewer than 1 percent of the nation’s hospitals have achieved that standard.
• The Medical Center has an integrated administrative structure led by Medical Center CEO David C. Linehan, M.D., and annual revenue of $6 billion. Including affiliates, it employs 32,683 faculty and staff. In 2025, it launched a strategic vision to become the best place to innovate, work, learn, and heal.
• The main campus of the University of Rochester Medical Center covers over 5.4 million sq. feet of space. Strong Memorial Hospital covers 1.6 million sq. feet, the School of Medicine 2.1 million sq. feet, and the School of Nursing and Eastman Dental about 100,000 sq. feet each.
• The School of Medicine and Dentistry consists of approximately 2,050 faculty members, 400 medical students, 900 residents and fellows, and 940 research trainees. 
• The School of Nursing’s 153 faculty members engage with 700 students across three bachelor’s programs, 10 master’s programs, 2 doctoral programs, and 10 advanced certificate programs.
• Research faculty attracted external funding totaling approximately $286 million in fiscal year 2025.
• We have achieved top 20 rankings in NIH funding in musculoskeletal research, ophthalmology, public health, and surgery based on data collected by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.
• The motto of the University of Rochester, Meliora ("ever better"), symbolizes the continuous change and improvement that have defined the University since its founding in 1850.

Accomplishments

• The National Cancer Institute in 2025 awarded the Wilmot Cancer Institute a special designation placing it in the top 4% of all cancer centers in the U.S.
• Wilmot Cancer Institute is home to the radiation oncology experts who were the first to take new, life-saving brain cancer treatment—shaped-beam radiosurgery—and apply it to other patients suffering from cancer that’s spread to the lungs and other organs. Early work in radiation at the UR and Wilmot formed the foundation for the field of Radiation Oncology and the treatment of cancer.
• The Wilmot Cancer Institute is home to the nation’s leading program aimed at helping patients cope with the side effects of cancer treatment.
• The University of Rochester Medical Center was one of the first 12 to receive $40 million from the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program from the National Institutes of Health, forming the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. The institute has earned an award in each subsequent funding period, bringing in millions of dollars across two decades to support innovative clinical and translational research to improve health outcomes in all people.
• In the past 10 years, 23 new companies have been formed with URMC technologies.
• A vaccine that our scientists created against Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) has virtually wiped out a leading cause of meningitis in preschoolers. Scientists then used the same approach to create a vaccine that prevents infection by pneumococcal bacteria, which cause meningitis, ear infections, pneumonia, and other maladies.
• University cardiologists have revolutionized the treatment of heart disease worldwide by showing that an implantable cardiac defibrillator significantly reduces death rates in certain groups of patients.
• Our scientists have brought about a quality of human vision previously thought impossible, by discovering aberrations in the human eye and developing ways to correct those imperfections.
• Our researchers were first to administer lung surfactant to premature infants, dramatically improving their survival rates. Surfactants are now used around the world.
• Medical Center researchers have played a leading role in bringing 12 new drugs and devices to market to treat neurological disorders, including every approved drug for Huntington’s disease, and the frontline treatments for Parkinson’s disease.
• The Medical Center was one of the first sites across the globe to test the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA COVID vaccine in May of 2020, which allowed our community volunteers to lead the world in vaccination against the novel coronavirus.
•  Medical Center researchers played a leading role in developing and testing RSV vaccines—from being the first to identify and characterize the viral protein targeted by the vaccines to testing two of the first vaccines approved to prevent RSV in adults.
• University of Rochester researchers were the first to describe the glymphatic system, the brain’s unique process of removing waste. This discovery has significant implications for neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, which are the result of the accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain.
• Rochester researchers discovered nonsense-mediated mRNA decay—one of the major surveillance systems in the body that protects against mistakes in gene expression that can lead to disease. This research has laid the foundation for the development of RNA-based treatments for conditions that can’t be corrected with conventional drugs.