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Week of 12 November 1999 Vol. III, No. 14 Feature Article BU hits a milestone in research funding By Hope Green Capping a decade of dramatic growth, Boston University topped $200 million in research-related funding awards for the first time in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1999. The total, which includes all grant and contract activity on the Charles River and Medical campuses, underscores BU's standing among the top academic research centers in the United States. "This milestone documents the University's status and character as a leading research university," says Dennis Berkey, University provost and dean of Arts and Sciences. "The great majority of these grants and contracts result from peer-reviewed competitions among the nation's leading scientists, engineers, physicians, and scholars." Research activity has risen steadily at BU since the early 1980s. Last year alone, the dollar amount of new awards rose by 11.2 percent on the Charles River Campus and by 3.5 percent on the Medical Campus. During a recent presentation to the University trustees, Berkey noted that in 1971, the year John Silber became BU's seventh president, the entire institution received $14.1 million in research funding. In fiscal 1999 three individual schools and colleges surpassed that figure: CAS, ENG, and MED. Adding it up In fiscal 1997, the most recent year for which statistics are available, Boston University ranked 41st among U.S. research universities and colleges in federal funding for science and engineering programs. According to figures received from the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), units receiving the highest levels of grant and contract funding from all sources in fiscal 1999 were the School of Medicine ($107.7 million), the College of Arts and Sciences ($37.6 million), the College of Engineering ($20 million), Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences ($6.9 million), and the Goldman School of Dental Medicine ($6 million). Together, these units accounted for 88 percent of BU's total sponsored funding for the year. Berkey stresses that research is a crucial part of education at BU. "Engaging in the process of inquiry and experimentation, rather than just reading about it, adds an important dynamic to the learning process," he says. "Generating new ideas and theories and testing them objectively not only generates new knowledge, but also strengthens understanding of existing concepts and approaches." Team efforts Some of the most important advances in recent years have come from research that cuts across disciplines, and BU has received some of its most generous awards for programs where two or more departments join forces. Last year, for instance, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $2.5 million grant to BU's bioinformatics program, which is led by outgoing ENG Dean Charles DeLisi. The program integrates courses and research in biology with computer modeling and information sciences. It draws faculty mainly from the biomedical engineering, chemistry, and biology departments, and prepares students for a variety of emerging scientific fields. BU faculty compete head-to-head with the faculty of other top universities for research funds with the support of OSP -- where staffers help faculty pitch proposals to government agencies such as NSF -- and the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, which acts as a matchmaking service between researchers and private sources of funding. "The growth and quality of the faculty is at the heart of our success, and our faculty has been very enterprising in seeking external funding," says Berkey. "It would take an endowment of about $4 billion for BU to be able to fund this volume of research internally." At CAS, the creation of such academic units as the Center for Space Physics, the Center for Adaptive Systems, and the department of cognitive and neural systems (CNS) have been important catalysts for the growth of research funding, according to OSP. The expansion of faculty in existing natural science programs also has substantially contributed to the trend, and the planned construction of a new science center dedicated to biology, chemistry, and computer science will afford still more opportunities for scientific inquiry. Meanwhile, ENG and SAR are expected to keep up their brisk pace in attracting funds for laboratory experiments and field work. On the Medical Campus, a number of research facilities have been established in the past several years. Two new buildings have initiated the BioSquare research complex, a joint venture between BU and the Boston Medical Center, adding approximately 360,000 square feet of modern laboratory space. External support for the School of Medicine rose to $107.7 million for the 1998-99 academic year, placing MED 20th out of 125 medical schools in the country, while its department of medicine, with external funding exceeding $60 million, now ranks 12th among academic medical departments in awards from the National Institutes of Health. In addition to launching a new doctoral program in molecular medicine this year, the department has established new research programs and added faculty in genetics, obesity-metabolism, and immunology. In addition, the School of Public Health has expanded its programs by moving into the newly renovated Talbot Building. On the whole, Berkey sees BU's passing the $200 million mark in research funding as a milestone on the path to further expansion. "We intend that the growth in research activity and external funding continue," he says, "reflecting the University's increasing contributions in leadership to the nation's basic and applied research agendas."