In an office cluttered with papers, plaques and books, Devendra "DK" Agrawal pointed to a calendar containing a Hindu proverb he loves: "If I rest, I rust."

Agrawal has rusted little in 26 years as a Creighton University scientist. A $3.3 million grant he received last month from the National Institutes of Health put his existing grant funding at $12.9 million, more than any Creighton researcher or physician at this time.

His research looks at ways to prevent arteries in the heart from narrowing, how air passages become restricted in asthmatics, why plaque collects in the carotid artery, how leg veins perform as grafts in heart bypasses and what effect vitamin D might have on asthma and heart disease.

He has seven research grants at the moment and, he hopes, more on the way.

"I have worked really hard in my life," Agrawal, 58, said. Next month he will receive Creighton's Distinguished Faculty Service Award. Last year he won the University Research Award.

Agrawal, who has doctorates in medical sciences and biochemistry, said his father headed a college in India. "You do your best and you do it with passion," his dad used to say.

Before coming to Creighton, Agrawal studied and taught in two Canadian universities. Colleagues there wanted to call him "Dave," but he wouldn't have it. He told them to either call him Devendra or DK (his middle name is Kumar). DK stuck in Canada and at Creighton.

Twenty-eight people now work in Agrawal's nine labs scattered around two floors in Creighton's Criss Health Sciences Building. They include doctoral students, postdoctoral scientists and technicians.

"I'm critical of my work," said Agrawal, a short man with chubby cheeks. "And I'm critical of their work. So I prepare them well."

"He can be tough," said Rohit Gaurav, who is pursuing his doctorate in biomedical sciences under Agrawal's guidance. "He pushes you."

Since Agrawal has been at Creighton, he has acquired two master's degrees, one in business administration, the other in information technology. Agrawal already had a master's degree in chemistry, earned in India.

Six of Agrawal's grants are from the NIH, the source of the most competitive, prestigious grants among health science researchers and physicians. In 2009 (the most recent year for which information was available), 84 scientists had five or more NIH grants. About 26,100 had one to four NIH grants, and many thousands had none.

Although Agrawal has become adept at procuring NIH funds, that wasn't always the case. He said he received one in the late 1980s, then went about 15 years without winning an NIH grant.

His funding through that period came mainly from pharmaceutical companies, he said. Some colleagues encouraged him to cease his efforts to get NIH grants because he could get by on the corporate support, he said.

"Somehow I took this as a challenge," Agrawal said. He earned two NIH grants about the same time in 2003.

"And when I hit it, I was very pleased," he said.

"He has perseverance, because he got turned down a lot of times," said Dr. Robert Townley, a Creighton professor of medicine who helped recruit Agrawal to Creighton. "He's a workaholic, and he expects that from people who are working with him."

Agrawal is the founder of the Creighton Center for Clinical & Translational Science, which strives to convert research into treatments for patients.

It's not rare for Agrawal to work 14 hours a day, starting at 7 a.m., working until 6 p.m., going home for dinner with his wife, Rekha, and resuming work at home until close to midnight.

Besides overseeing his labs and students, he serves on national and international medical committees and on editorial boards of medical journals.

His son, Ankit Agrawal, is a first-year medical student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Agrawal has two other children, a daughter who is a scientist in New York and a son studying in a dual medical degree-doctoral program in Pittsburgh.

"He always listens to me complain, but he never complains," Ankit Agrawal said of his father. The amount of work his dad does rarely seems to stress him out, the son said.

"He knows this is what his passion is in life."

Contact the writer:

402-444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com

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