Vice President for Research Tim Mulcahy presented his annual report on the state of the University of Minnesota’s research enterprise to the Board of Regents Dec. 9. Highlights from the fiscal 2011 report include:
Grants and contracts awarded to university researchers topped $769 million. This marks a decrease from the previous year’s total, mainly due to the expiration of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. In fact, if ARRA funds are excluded from the 2010 total, awards increased slightly this year.
The university reported $786 million in research and development expenditures for 2010, the period covered in the latest annual survey conducted by the National Science Foundation. That represents a 6 percent increase over the previous year and allows the university to retain its eighth-place ranking among public institutions. Because final results from the NSF survey are still pending, in early 2012, Mulcahy will offer a more complete comparative analysis.
The Office for Technology Commercialization reported increases in all but one of the key metrics that are used to track the performance of the technology transfer program, and launched nine startup companies — the most in the university’s history. The office posted a decline in gross revenue to $10.1 million due to the continued expiration of patents on Ziagen, the university’s main source of technology commercialization revenue over the past decade.
“University researchers were very successful in securing funding in an increasingly competitive funding environment,” says Mulcahy. “Their success in a wide range of disciplines, along with our continued effectiveness in commercializing their discoveries, clearly demonstrates that the University of Minnesota is one of the elite public research universities in the country.”
Visit our Annual Report page to download the fiscal 2011 research report and presentation.
December 9, 2011
Practice, Research tools, Technology commercialization