University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

By ARTHUR PAGE

Published: March 13, 2009

Research expenditures across the disciplines at UB increased by nearly 7.7 percent to a record $348.2 million in the 2008 fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, according to the National Science Foundation.

Research expenditures in science and engineering at UB totaled a record $338.3 million, up by approximately 7.5 percent from the previous year. The amount represents a 30.6 percent increase over expenditures in FY 2004 when John B. Simpson became UB president.

Also increasing to a new high were expenditures in the humanities, education, social work and professional programs. The total of $9.9 million represented an increase of approximately 15 percent over the previous year.

The record spending is documented in the NSF’s “Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges,” considered the national benchmark of the size and breadth of university-based research programs.

“Across the board, UB’s researchers continue to be very successful in today’s very competitive research-funding climate,” said Jorge V. José, vice president for research. “This is good news for the university, as well as the Buffalo-Niagara area, since it documents one important aspect of UB’s increasing economic impact on our region.”

UB’s research funding is responsible for more than 3,000 jobs on the North, South and Downtown campuses. These positions include faculty researchers, technical staff, research assistants and administrative staff—a highly skilled workforce that is the building block of a knowledge-based economy.

The majority of UB’s research expenditures continued to be in the life sciences, which at $225.2 million represented 65 percent of the total amount of research expenditures in FY 2008. The next largest category was engineering, representing 18 percent of total research expenditures.

Twenty-six departments and centers had research expenditures exceeding $2 million in FY 2008, up from 21 the previous year. Leading that list was the Research Institute on Addictions at just over $8 million, followed by the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences at $7.1 million and the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at $6.3 million.

Expenditures were up for all funding sources, including industry, foundations and state and local governments, when it came to science-and-engineering research. Federal expenditures at $157.5 million led the way among those expenditures, followed by institutional funds expenditures at $96.9 million and expenditures of industrial funding at $21.4 million.