Wayne State University believes new facility-improvement grants from the National Institutes of Health are an encouraging sign that it could see more research from the organization. The Board of Governors recently approved nearly $8 million worth of upgrades to its C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development. The NIH is providing more than $3 million in research facilities improvement grants to help fund the project. "The fact that they give you grants to upgrade your facility is acknowledgment that you are doing good research there," said John Oliver, Wayne State vice president for research. The institute moved its Perinatology Research Branch to the Mott Center after the university completed $5.4 million worth of upgrades to its third floor in January of 2004. "Once we renovated the facility for that particular branch, that gave them impetus to respond favorably to funding for these two projects," said John Davis, CFO and vice president for finance and facilities. WSU also plans to move its Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics to the 80,000-square-foot Mott Center from its Biological Sciences Building following the renovations. The move will provide the unit with proximity to its largest customers in the Perinatology Research Branch and Obstetrics and Gynecology, Davis said.