UC San Diego Again Ranks 5th in Nation for Federal R&D Dollars

Article Content

The University of California, San Diego again ranks fifth among top U.S. universities in federal research and development dollars, with $1,074,000,000 in expenditures for fiscal year 2012, according to figures just released by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Sandra A. Brown, vice chancellor for research, noted that UC San Diego has consistently ranked among the top 10 research universities in R&D obligations and expenditures for more than a decade. The NSF research rankings show useful trends over time, she said, and the extramural funding is a key leading indicator of the impact of the campus’ research enterprise.

“The university continues to attract these significant investments through the combined efforts of our faculty, staff and researchers,” Brown said. “UC San Diego is also among the national leaders in the life sciences, which account for more than half of all R&D at universities and colleges.”

The university had federal R&D expenditures of $943,000,000 in FY 2010, and $1,009,000,000 in FY 2011. The FY 2012 number of $1,074,000,000 is an increase of 6.4 percent over the previous year.

Johns Hopkins University led the survey, followed by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Washington, and UC San Diego. UC San Francisco is ranked sixth, and UCLA is ranked eighth among the nation’s top twenty in the current NSF rankings.

The NSF numbers typically lag a year or more. According to the foundation, U.S. university spending on R&D in all fields totaled $65.8 billion in FY 2012. When adjusted for inflation, higher education R&D declined by 1.1 percent in FY 2012.