Research funding continues to increase

Figures released by the university show it is spending more on research than any other public university in the nation, surpassing the University of Michigan.

Martin Cadwallader, interim dean of the Graduate School, will present a report to the Board of Regents Thursday, Feb. 7, that will credit the university community for attracting an unprecedented level of federal support for research.

During the 1999-2000 school year, UW–Madison spent $554 million on research and development, while the University of Michigan spent $552 million. They were followed by UCLA ($531 million) and the University of Washington ($529 million). UW–Madison trailed only the $901 million spent by Johns Hopkins University on research and development expenditures. The private university continues to dominate research expenditures thanks to its Applied Physics Lab, which attracts classified federal research projects that UW–Madison is not eligible for.

“We are very excited that we are a leader in this important measure of research abilities,” Cadwallader says. “It is a compliment to our faculty, academic staff and students that they are able to attract this level of research funding.”

Grant dollars go to qualified researchers for specific areas of study and cannot be used for other purposes. In the last 18 months, the UW–Madison community has continued to prove its ability to attract research money, especially federal grants.

In 2000-01, UW–Madison researchers attracted $509 million in extramural grants, including $360 million from the federal government, an 18 percent increase over the previous year. In 1999-2000, UW–Madison obtained $305 million of its $445 million in research awards from the federal government. During the last three school years, the federal government has increased its support of UW–Madison research by $117 million (48 percent).

As of January 2002, UW–Madison had a $15 million (4 percent) overall increase in research awards compared to this time last year. Cadwallader credits large budget increases at two federal agencies where UW–Madison gets a large portion of its federal research grants: the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation.

“The NIH and NSF are scheduled to receive 15 and 9 percent budget increases respectively,” Cadwallader says. “With an increased pool of available funding, we hope to see another substantial increase in research awards this year.”

A lion’s share of the grants went to several academic units during the 2000-01 school year. The Medical School was awarded 31 percent of extramural grants, followed by the College of Letters and Science (16 percent), Engineering (16 percent), College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (15 percent), the Graduate School (11 percent) and the School of Education (4 percent). All other units shared the remaining 7 percent.

Of those grants, 79 percent were awarded to faculty, 14 percent to academic staff, and 7 percent to deans and directors.