Media Contact: Mario Aguilera, (619) 534-7572, maguilera@ucsd.edu

Research dollars awarded to the University of California, San Diego totaled more than $400 million in fiscal year 1997-1998, a jump of more than 31 percent compared with fiscal 1992-1993, according to information released by UCSD’s Office of Contract and Grant Administration.

The $400.6 million total for research awards, which includes funds awarded for research and clinical studies, ranks first in the University of California system. UCSD also led the UC system in research awards from the federal government at $316.1 million, a 26 percent jump compared with fiscal 1992-1993.

"In its short history, UCSD has emerged as a national research leader, and the latest increase in research funding awarded to the campus goes further to underscore that," said Richard Attiyeh, UCSD Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies.  "Given the excellence of the other campuses within the University of California system, to say UCSD is leading the UC system in research awards is saying quite a lot."

In the larger category of "total contract and grant awards," a sum that includes funds for research, training, clinical studies and public service, UCSD received $412.4 million in fiscal 1997-1998, representing a jump of more than 84 percent in ten years.  The total for federal contract and grant awards, $324.3 million, was first in the UC system in 1997-1998.

Led by a $22 million award from the National Science Foundation for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure at UCSD’s San Diego Supercomputer Center, major awards in 1997-1998 included a $10.5 million National Science Foundation award to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a $7.8 million award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to Scripps and a $5.6 million award from the National Institutes of Health for an Alzheimer’s disease study conducted by the UCSD School of Medicine.

UCSD’s contract and grant awards total increased more than 17 percent in one year from 1996-1997 to 1997-1998, led by individual jumps of more than 21 percent in federal government awards and more than 27 percent in private industry awards.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, UCSD ranked third in the nation in research and development spending for the most recent year figures are available (1996).  In the Chronicle’s list of the top 100 institutions, UCSD ranked behind Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington, and ahead of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UC San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Harvard University.