University of Nebraska Medical Center

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, people everywhere wondered: What makes this disease so especially infectious? It was scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, working with evidence gathered in the National Quarantine Unit, in the new $119 million Dr. Edwin G. & Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center on UNMC’s Omaha campus, who found the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads through airborne transmission.

That’s the story of UNMC in the 21st century. Both breaking ground – the Davis Global Center, which opened for business in late 2019, is just the latest jewel among a host of recent and ongoing construction projects – and groundbreaking.

UNMC, which also led the first clinical trial in the U.S. on the use of remdesivir to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19, is known internationally for its expertise in the field of biopreparedness and high-consequence special pathogens. Here at home, UNMC is proud to be Nebraska’s only public academic health sciences center, committed to the next-generation education of our state’s health care work force. We are innovators in rural primary care and roots-deep in Nebraska’s soil, serving our state and its communities through award-winning outreach.

Led by Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, UNMC has six colleges, two institutes and a graduate studies program, serving more than 4,000 students in more than two dozen programs.