CSU 2009 research funding hits $312 million

FORT COLLINS – Colorado State University faculty landed a record $312 million in external research dollars during the 2009 fiscal year.

The funding came from both private and public sources and represents a 3 percent increase over 2008’s $303 million. Grant requests by CSU faculty members during 2009 were more than $1 billion, up 47.3 percent from 2008. In the past five years, research spending has increased 39 percent.

“Our researchers earn the confidence of government agencies and private-sector sponsors because they are innovative and they share that desire to improve our world — finding real solutions to real problems — with their students,´ said CSU President Tony Frank, in a prepared statement. “Record levels of research expenditures, when looked at collectively, help to illustrate the excellence of our faculty and the immense potential for discovery at a premier land-grant research university like Colorado State.”

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Federal funding accounted for more than 80 percent of the 2009 research dollars, with the largest amount coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Other sources of external research funding — state, foundation, commercial — accounted for $51.6 million of the expenditures.

The university credits some of the research funding increase to the creation of CSU’s Supercluster technology-transfer concept that connects researchers with industry experts to bring products to market. The first three Superclusters are in clean energy, infectious disease and cancer.

Since the model’s formation in 2006, invention disclosures at CSU have grown from 42 annually to more than 100 as of June.