Iowa State University reports its researchers raised more than $300-million in the past fiscal year for a range of projects on the Ames campus. Surya Mallapragada, ISU’s associate vice president for research, says that figure includes federal and non-federal sources.
“These are a set of grants that total up to over $300-million to support research at Iowa State University,” she says. “So it’s not just one gift, it’s the whole bunch of different research awards that researchers at Iowa State University apply for and compete for at the national level.”
The money comes from sources including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health.
“We work with a lot of different partners, federal agencies, industry, and so on, to attract these funds to Iowa to work on important research problems that benefit the people of Iowa,” she says.
Mallapragada says the money will be going toward a number of research projects, and she offers an example of how the whole state benefits.
“There’s one project that’s funded by the National Science Foundation for about $20-million. It’s a five-year project which focuses on advanced biomanufacturing,” Mallapragada says. “It’s led by Iowa State University, but it involves researchers from the University of Iowa, UNI, and several other partners across the state.”
Overall, Iowa State attracted more than $530-million in external funding during the last fiscal year. That’s a drop from the previous fiscal year’s record of nearly $602-million.
(By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)