UC Davis set a record last year in the amount of research support it received.
The campus was awarded $268.6 million in research grants from July 1, 1999, to June 30, 2000, the seventh consecutive year that research funding broke the previous year’s record.
The $268.6 million represents an increase of 10 percent over the 1998-99 total of $246.3 million.
The campus’s combination of research disciplines plays an important role in its success when competing for research funds, according to UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Research Kevin Smith.
"We have a wealth of intellectual expertise in core research fields that were unrelated in the past," Smith said. "And we’re weaving networks among those fields that make exciting collaborations not just possible, but inevitable. That kind of synergy is recognized by the people who sponsor research."
Smith cites several interdisciplinary campus research initiatives, including the Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, the Tahoe research initiative and the genomics initiative. Much of the impetus for those programs comes from a grass-roots push from the community to use the campus’s expertise to solve pressing problems, Smith said.
Last year’s increase in research funding was especially noteworthy because the previous year the campus received several huge awards.
"Because of the previous year’s exceptional awards, we might have expected this year to be less impressive," Smith said. "Instead, campus researchers built on the previous year’s extraordinary success."
Over the last two years, funding for research at UC Davis increased by 37 percent.
Among the UC Davis schools and colleges:
•The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences had the largest amount of funding at $62.3 million, up from $49.5 million the previous year.
• The College of Letters and Science increased its funding by more than $5 million, to a total of $15.9 million. That represents a 48 percent increase over the previous year.
• The College of Engineering saw a significant increase in funding, bringing in $37.5 million in 1999-00, compared to $26.8 in 1998-99.
• The campus’s organized research units also contributed to the overall increase in research funding for the campus. They received $41.8 million this year, compared to $32.2 million last year.
• The School of Medicine brought in $55 million in research funding, compared to $65.6 million the previous year.
• The School of Veterinary Medicine received $32.4 million, compared to $38 million in the preceding year.
According to Smith, last year’s decrease in funding to the schools of medicine and veterinary medicine could be attributed to the very large awards both had received in 1998-99.
"The previous year was phenomenal for them," he said. "And both schools received more funding this year than in any other year except last year."
The increase in funding at UC Davis came from all categories of sponsors. Federal support for campus research increased by $8.8 million to $150.8 million. State funding increased by $7.8 million, to a total of $29.4 million, and private support for campus research increased by $5.6 million to $88.4 million.
"We expected the increase in private funding because our reputation for productive collaborations is growing," Smith said. "But we didn’t expect to see large increases in federal and state support of research. The improvement in the economy translated into much more robust government support of research."
The federal government continues to be the largest sponsor of campus research, contributing 56 percent of the total funding. The state sponsors 11 percent of campus research. Private-sector support contributes 33 percent of the total campus research funding.
Private-sector support includes funding from businesses, charitable organizations, agricultural marketing boards, local government agencies, private interest groups and foundations, institutions of higher education, and the other University of California campuses and UC-managed Department of Energy laboratories.
All segments of the UC system increased their research support last year except for UC Berkeley and the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The entire UC system received $2.7 billion in research awards, which was an increase of 13 percent over the previous year.
The campus receives several large annual awards that fund core research facilities. Last year’s awards included $8.7 million from the Department of Energy for the National Institute for Global Environmental Change and $7.5 million from the National Institutes of Health for the California Regional Primate Research Center.
Last year, as in the previous year, the office of research processed over $1 billion in research proposals.