Johns Hopkins leads in R&D funding

Physics Today: Johns Hopkins University is again the leading US academic institution in total research and development spending for the 30th year in a row, according to a new the latest annual NSF Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges.

The total funding ranking includes research support not only from federal agencies, but also from foundations, industry and other sources.

The university pulled in $1.68 billion in medical, science and engineering research in fiscal 2008, half of which was based at the Applied Physics Laboratory. Since NSF changed its methodology in 1979 to include spending by the Applied Physics Laboratory in the university’s totals, the university has remained top of the list.

APL employs 4,300 people working specifically on some 400 R&D projects with annual funding of about $800 million.

The institutions ranked second through fifth—University of California at San Francisco; University of Wisconsin at Madison; University of Michigan and UCLA—all reported spending in the $800 million to $900 million range.

Top of the federal list

Johns Hopkins also ranked first on the NSF’s separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.42 billion in FY2008 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense.

"More than half of our annual expenditures is invested in research," said Lloyd Minor, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Johns Hopkins. "Our success in attracting external research support is a testament to the talent, dedication and leadership of the faculty, staff and students."

In FY2010, positions on the list may change slightly due to the heavy investment in R&D as part of the administration's billion dollar stimulus package.

Virginia Tech dropped from 42nd to 46th out of 679 universities, not because of a lack of funding—which increased by $7 million to $373 million in 2008—, but because funding increased more dramatically at other institutions.

"While our overall growth was below our goals, the areas that account for competitive research awards continued to grow," said Robert Walters, vice president for research. "We increased our external federal funding by more than 5 percent and our industry funding by almost 20 percent. In the current economy, those numbers are encouraging."

Paul Guinnessy