CU receives increase in research funding
Groundbreaking research happens every day on the CU campus. This year, a $16 million increase in research funding is helping top professors from a variety of different fields learn more about medicine, biotechnology, renewable energy, global climate studies and space exploration.
According to Stein Sture, CU’s vice chancellor for research and dean of the graduate school, there are approximately 1,500 projects per year that range from all areas of research.
“There is literally not a facet of life that we don’t look into one way or the other,” Sture said. “We do things in biotechnology and biomedical devices; just about any infectious disease to Down syndrome and diabetes, cancers and liquid crystal displays in computers.”
CU works with many of the federally funded labs in Boulder like the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. CU also receives a great deal of funding from NASA.
“When you have these institutions where faculty come together, you have greater, stronger research,” Bronson Hilliard, CU’s spokesman said. “We have excellent research faculty and excellent leadership.”
According to CU’s Web site, CU faculty includes four Nobel laureates with the return of Professor Thomas Cech, a Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry. Cech subsequently became the president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute based in Maryland in 2000.
The process of receiving research funding starts with writing proposals. Faculty members write proposals for research tasks on what they are studying. This is a competitive process with faculty members from other universities.
“About 1 out of 10 to 1 out of 20 proposals we submit are funded,” Sture said. “Funding research comes to faculty members in the university’s accounts to be used in exactly that research that is proposed and they have a time frame to finish it.”
So where’s all the money going?
“In all cases, we spend much of the money to support students,” Sture said. “We buy instrumentation and equipment. Teaching benefits greatly from the research that we do. Many of the faculty get their salaries from the research.”
Some students like master’s mechanical engineering candidate James Trevey said they feel the money is used well.
“I’m researching lithium batteries,” Trevey said. “We get most of everything we need with the money we receive.”
State funding plays a role as well. According to Hilliard, 7 percent of the total budget at CU comes from the state of Colorado to cover operational costs like power, heat and equipment. State funding allows CU to free up money for other projects.
$280 million is only a portion of the $660.8 million that was received by all of the CU campuses. Despite that fact, Boulder saw the largest sponsored research funding according to CU’s Web site. Donor contributions alone topped $162.5 million.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Brittany Sovine at Brittany.sovine@colorado.edu.
