Northwestern received $416 million in research grants this year, the largest amount of grant money it has ever earned.
The money received increased by 8 percent from the $380 million obtained last year. The number of grants also increased from 2,229 to 2,381.
This funding supports numerous studies, including research on chronic sleep deprivation and learning disabilities.
Susan Ross, the director of the Northwestern’s Office for Sponsored Research said the increase in research funds is a complex issue.
“It’s difficult to tell what (the increase) means because there is a lot behind it,” Ross said. “A lot of the increase has to do with the timing.”
In some cases, the difference between having a grant counted among the 2006 total and the 2007 total can be only a matter of days. Also, sometimes a school receives such a small amount of money that just one grant can increase their grant total by 20 percent.
Ross cautioned to be hesitant when looking at the numbers, but she didn’t deny that the increase is good news.
“It is still real money that supports research by providing salaries for researchers and buys a lot of equipment for researchers to use,” Ross said. “The 8 percent (increase) still counts.”
The Feinberg School of Medicine received $236.4 million, a 17 percent increase from 2006. Bruce Elliot, the director of the Office for Sponsored Research in Chicago, said he believes the reason for the increase is complicated.
Feinberg receives 68 percent of its funding from the National Institute of Health, Elliot said, and in 2006 Congress cut spending on the institute. As a result, it has become harder for NU to receive research grants from the institute. However, NU has learned to cope, Elliot said.
“The Northwestern University faculty has learned to adapt to the flat funding of the National Institute of Health, its biggest contributor, by moving more toward interdisciplinary contracts,” Elliot said.
The institute’s new program, Roadmap Initiatives, encourages universities, including NU, to merge different disciplines into their studies by giving more money to interdisciplinary research.
“(The institute) funds interdisciplinary studies so (researchers) can look at a lot of different approaches to solve large projects,” Elliot said.
For example, Feinberg Prof. Teresa Woodruff, received a $21 million grant from the institute to develop fertility preservation techniques for women diagnosed with cancer. The study encourages many researchers from different fields – social workers, oncologists, pediatricians, engineers, educators and others – to come together and study the impact of cancer and cancer treatment on reproductive health.
The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center has conducted another interdisciplinary study in which NU partners with three other universities to study spatial learning in children to better understand how these skills are developed.
These grants are important for research universities, said Joan Naper, director of research communications at NU’s Office for Research, in an e-mail.
“Many, if not most, university and school-based centers exist on funding from the federal government, industry or private foundations,” she said.
Reach Angela Lu at [email protected].
