Research funding at Purdue highest ever

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University generated a university record $454.5 million in sponsored research funding for fiscal year 2018, which ended on June 30. The amount raced past the funding for fiscal year 2017, which was $418 million, and set a university record for the fourth consecutive year.

For fiscal year 2018, corporate and foundation funding of scientific and engineering research accounted for 30 percent of the total, and funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health accounted for 15 percent and 14 percent of the total, respectively.

Suresh Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships, and Purdue's Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, said that the talent of Purdue researchers and the availability of advanced facilities at the university enable world-changing research.

"I congratulate our faculty members, professional staff, and students for achieving the highest sponsored research funding ever at Purdue," he said. "This was also the broadest portfolio of funders for the university, which reflects how much the reputation of the research here has spread."

Research funded at Purdue in fiscal year 2018 includes:

• $4.2 million from Rolls-Royce, and $6 million from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation for the Purdue Experimental Turbine Aerothermal Laboratory to improve compact gas turbine engines.

• $6.7 million (of a multi-year $27 million grant) from the Semiconductor Research Corp. to fund a new national center to develop brain-inspired computing for intelligent autonomous systems such as drones and personal robots capable of operating without human intervention.

• $5 million over five years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop stronger, more versatile varieties of sorghum that have the potential to reach millions of African farmers.

• $3.5 million (of a $20 million multi-year grant) from the National Science Foundation to develop new technologies to produce fuels from U.S. shale-gas deposits that could inject $20 billion annually into the economy.

• $7.3 million from the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin (UNSA) in Peru to launch the Arequipa Nexus Institute for Food, Water, Energy, and the Environment.

• $2.2 million from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to investigate the development of the musculoskeletal system with an eye toward repairing damaged limbs.

Writer: Steve Tally, 765-494-9809, steve@purdue.edu, @sciencewriter

Sources: Suresh Garimella, 765-494-6209, sureshg@purdue.edu, @svgarimella