The Duke DREAM campaign was developed to address this problem of reduced funding. The strategic goals of this campaign are to:

1) Establish endowed Professorships ($1.5-2.5 million) to invest in world-class faculty who would, in turn, secure funding from the National Institutes of Health. Interest dollars from these endowments are to be used to support investigator salaries and provide them with the time and resources necessary to develop research programs.

2) Raise $2 million in philanthropic support over five years to provide bridge funding for key research programs, prevent successful research programs from terminating due to the lack of funds, and to start new projects that incorporate state-of-the-art techniques to advance the frontiers of anesthesiology research.

3) Establish philanthropic support as a long-term mechanism of limiting the adverse consequences of cyclical federal funding.