MBI director receives College of Medicine’s lifetime achievement award

It’s one thing to be remembered for bricks and mortar, but ideas are more important for William G. Luttge, Ph.D., recipient of the College of Medicine’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2003.

Faculty praised Luttge for the growth of the neuroscience department, which he chaired for nearly 20 years, and the emergence of the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute, a $60 million, six-story facility dedicated to brain research.

“The award is given because of Dr. Luttge’s career contributions,” said Michael Clare-Salzer, M.D., an associate professor in the pathology department and president of the faculty council. “This is the premiere Health Science Center award of its type and is the most significant award given during the College of Medicine’s research day.”

His colleagues noted that Luttge, the executive director of UF’s McKnight Brain Institute, built unprecedented collaboration among diverse departments and colleges, state and federal agencies, and Shands at UF.

“It’s easy to focus on the building and all the toys that are in it, but what I think I am most proud of is the conceptual nature of the institute and the way that it operates — what it can do to help the university achieve its goals of national rankings,” Luttge said.

When Luttge took a faculty position at UF in 1971, the university was clearly not recognized as the leader in research it is today, he said.

“I have always given credit to a statement made by former UF President John Lombardi for giving us the courage to do something different,” Luttge said. “He was recruited out of Johns Hopkins University, and his whole point was, ‘Why not?’ Why not have the University of Florida mentioned in the same breath as Johns Hopkins or Stanford or the top research-intensive universities in the world?”

In Luttge’s mind, everyone would have to work together in order for the neuroscience department, brain institute and university to achieve such lofty research goals.

“It always seemed logical to me that the way this institute ought to operate is to involve everybody at this university. Neuroscience is by its very nature an interdisciplinary field, so why not fully expand it?” Luttge said. “At UF, you have a bigger opportunity than at most other universities because we have every conceivable college here. The excitement we have now in regard to the McKnight Brain Institute’s ability to bring people together and to stimulate activities was, in the beginning, a fantasy — a dream at best.”

Luttge earned his doctoral degree in biological sciences from the University of California at Irvine in 1971. He came to UF that year as an assistant professor of neuroscience and began pursuing research examining the molecular and behavioral actions of steroids in the brain. In guiding the formation of the McKnight Brain Institute, he has raised more than $40 million in federal grants and awards, and millions more from foundations, donors, state programs and corporate partners.