The University of Colorado at Boulder received about $280 million in sponsored research awards in fiscal year 2008, surpassing last year's record-breaking total by roughly $14 million.
According to CU-Boulder Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School Stein Sture, NASA again was the top federal agency providing funding to CU-Boulder, awarding the campus roughly $56 million. In fiscal 2007, NASA awarded CU-Boulder about $50 million in funding, which included $3 million from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
The other top funding agencies for CU-Boulder in 2008 were the National Science Foundation at approximately $47 million, the National Institutes of Health at roughly $42 million, the Department of Commerce at approximately $38 million and several Department of Defense agencies, which awarded CU-Boulder about $14 million.
Sture stressed that the 2008 figures are still preliminary, and the official CU-Boulder sponsored research totals won't be available for several months, including funding awarded from all federal agencies, industry and the state of Colorado. The 2008 awards are in the process of being broken down according to campus research institutes, the Graduate School and campus departments.
"Our faculty should be commended for their success in a time of economic uncertainty and increased competition for federal dollars," said Sture. "These awards help to support our graduate students, who in turn use their talents to help our faculty conduct both basic and applied research that benefits the citizens of Colorado, the nation and the world."
While the sponsored research funding at CU-Boulder has traditionally involved a "rich blend" of funding over a variety of disciplines, NASA has been recognizing CU-Boulder's space science excellence for decades, said Sture. According to NASA, CU-Boulder is the single largest recipient of NASA research dollars in the nation.
The total sponsored research awards in 2008 to the University of Colorado system was nearly $661 million in fiscal 2008, breaking all previous records. The University of Colorado Denver and its Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora received a combined total of $371.5 million. The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs received $9.2 million in fiscal 2008.