UC Davis researchers received a total of $298.3 million in research awards in the 2000-01 year. That total, 11 percent higher than 1999-00, sets a new record for the campus. Last year was the eighth consecutive year that research funding broke the previous year’s record.
"We have an extraordinarily gifted team of people in the research community here at UC Davis," said Vice Chancellor for Research Barry Klein. "Campus researchers and scholars worked very hard last year, and the campus’s growing reputation for excellence contributed to the phenomenal success of their proposals."
The largest research awards (other than annual core funding for large centers like the Primate Center) include $4.6 million awarded to Bruce Kutter from the National Science Foundation for an NEES Geotechnical Centrifuge Facility and $4 million to Richard Michelmore from the USDA for a project titled "Comparative Genomics of Domestication Traits in Lettuce and Sunflower."
"While it’s gratifying to win large awards, campus scholars also receive awards of various sizes that are very prestigious and important to their research programs and the campus," said Klein. "Competition is often fierce for those prestigious awards. It’s an great honor to receive awards like Jay Mechling’s National Endowment for the Humanities, or the Guggenheims won by professors Krener and Wedin, or the Sloan Fellowships won by Matthew Augustine, Kimberly McAllister and Martin Usrey."
Almost all segments of the campus research community increased their research funding:
• The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences received over $79.3 million in awards, a 27 percent increase over the previous year.
• The School of Medicine received $54.8 million, close to the $55 million it received the year before.
• The College of Engineering received $40.7 million in research funding, compared with $37.5 million the previous year.
• The School of Veterinary Medicine was awarded $36.9 million, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.
• The Division of Biological Sciences received $29.3 million, a 44 percent increase over the previous year.
Organized research units saw a 14 percent decrease in their research funding, to $36.8 million.
Research awards from the federal government (at $186.5 million) constituted 62.5 percent of the total awards received. The State of California sponsored $27.6 million, which was 9.3 percent of the total.
Awards from private business dropped to $14.5 million, mainly because there were several exceptional multimillion-dollar awards from private sponsors in the previous year.
The balance of the campus’s research funding came from private foundations and interest groups, other governments, charitable organizations, institutes of higher education, and UC campuses, labs and the Office of the President.
Campus researchers submitted a record amount of research proposals as well, over $1.4 billion. "In the last five years campus researchers have more than doubled the amount of research proposals they submit," said Klein.
"That’s a remarkable accomplishment," he said, "and the office of research is looking for ways to build on that success, and to simplify our processes and improve service to the campus research community."