UC San Diego Maintains No. 5 NSF Ranking for R&D Expenditures

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Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications

As it has for several years, the University of California, San Diego ranks fifth among top U.S. universities for research and development expenditures, with $1,075,554,000 in expenditures for fiscal year 2013, according to figures just released by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

That’s a slight increase over the 2012 expenditures of $1,073,864,000, and leads the University of California system.

UC San Francisco ranks 6^th on the NSF list, UCLA 10^th, UC Berkeley 24^th, and UC Davis 25^th.

Johns Hopkins University, with $2,168,568,000, ranks first, followed by the University of Michigan ($1,375,117,000), the University of Washington ($1,192,513,000), and the University of Wisconsin ($1,123,501,000).

Vice Chancellor for Research Sandra A. Brown noted that UC San Diego consistently ranks among the top 10 research universities in R&D expenditures. The NSF R&D-expenditure 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 NSF numbers typically lag a year or more. According to the foundation, U.S. university expenditures for R&D in all fields totaled $67,041,154,000 in FY 2013. That number was $65,744,254,000 in 2012.