Research growing yearly at UM System

By Jedd Rosche

Published March 21, 2006

Last year, the UM system spent $339 million in research grants.

This year, it expects to spend $369 million. By the end of 2007, it expects to spend more than $400 million.

John Gardner, UM system vice president for research and economic development, said the increases — about 9 percent each year since 1996 — is part of a trend that is taking research money away from the private sector and introducing it to universities around the country.

"It's a change from the industrial era when the largest basic research contributor was the private sector," Gardner said. "It's been a dramatic change in the last half of the century."

Gardner said two-thirds of all scientific research is taking place on university campuses, while the rest is still part of private businesses. He said that 50 years ago, the numbers were reversed.

He said the UM system is part of this trend and collects hundreds of millions of dollars each year in grants and awards for research from the federal and state government as well as from private businesses that outsource their research to the university.

The UM system along with large research organizations such as the National Science Foundation monitor the grant money they spent rather than the total amount they receive, Gardner said. He said that because the amount of grant money institutions receive is usually greater than the amount they spend, this is a more accurate gauge.

"Funding can go up and down," Gardner said. "That's why it's more accurate to gauge based on spending more so than money received."

Nikki Krawitz, vice president for finance and administration, said most of the university's research expenditures are paid through grants and awards.

"Whenever we get funding from a grant, there's a cost associated with the research," Krawitz said. "Research takes place in a laboratory or an office, and somebody has to pay for that facility."

These costs are reimbursed under the grants, Krawitz said

The sort of government and private grants Gardner described fund a wide range of research at MU.

Noah Manring, associate dean for research for College of Engineering, said the college had more than $20 million in outside research contracts.

Manring said that the federal government awarded $2.2 million for research in nanotechnology, which he said is the largest research study underway in his college.

"It's what keeps the curriculum current," Manring said. "Without the research component, we aren't able to teach students updated information."

Manring said the College of Engineering awarded its own research grants and allotted $12 million of its $30 million budget for research grants to in-house researchers.

One of the largest research projects on campus is the National Swine Research and Resource Center, which is under construction.

The federal government funds most of the project, biotechnology professor Randall Prather said.

The facility, which cost $8.3 million, will focus on constructing genetic models based on the hundreds of pigs housed in the facility, Prather said.

Prather said that though MU would have to pay for part of the facility, it could bring money to the campus in the future.

"It could become self-supporting later on," Prather said.

Krawitz said MU is contributing $3.5 million to the swine center.

The UM system also dispenses $2 million each year to faculty members for research, Krawitz said.

The grants are given out by a board headed by William Miller from the College of Engineering.

"Any tenure-track faculty member on any of the four University of Missouri campuses are eligible to submit proposals to the research board," Miller said.

Miller said the maximum amount of funding received in a grant from the UM system was $50,000.