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University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers pulled in $44.6 million from the National Science Foundation in fiscal 2008 — an increase of more than 33 percent over the previous year. But the flush federal funding may fall victim to the economic recession in 2009, according to experts.
The university’s flagship campus saw its NSF funding level hover around $30 million from 2002 to 2007 — with a previous 10-year high of $38.6 million in 2004 and a low of $19.9 million in 2000. Last year, however, NSF funding shot up $11.2 million over the previous year: to $44.6 million in fiscal 2008, which ended in June, from $33.4 million in fiscal 2007.
Marla Michel, UMass’ director of research liaison and development, said credit for the high funding totals was due to the “prolific” UMass faculty. “They’re machines,” Michel said.
Fiscal 2009 is off to a similarly brisk pace: UMass Amherst has already brought in $20.7 million from the NSF in the first six months. The jump isn’t suggestive of an explicit, planned, schoolwide targeting of NSF dollars, though UMass does try to attract as much federal research funding as it can, Michel said. The school’s federal research fundraising efforts fall somewhere between being a conscious effort and serendipity, she said. What the school can do is hire strategically, Michel said. UMass’ administration works to attract high-quality faculty, and then tries to enable them — by partnering with industry, for example — to do the kind of work that attracts funding.
While monthly funding numbers for fiscal 2009 are up at UMass, Michel said it was a tough climate for university researchers, some of whom are finding they’ve won an award, but not the total funding they requested. “(They might say) ‘we can only give you $70,000, do you still want it?’ It’s awkward,” she said.
Yearly funding totals can also be juiced by incoming payments for previous big funding wins. In fiscal 2008, UMass received about $6.9 million as part of a of a six-year, $40 million grant for MassNanoTech, a nanoscale engineering center that opened new facilities in the fall.
Robert Kispert, director of federal and university programs at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative agreed that such a spike amid a recession is partly due to statistical noise.
“But that’s a good noise,” he said, laughing.
The recession begin to affect the federal research budget for fiscal 2009 and 2010, Kispert said. The budgets for defense and homeland security are fixed, but Kispert said he expects federal research funding to stay flat or decrease in 2009. Kispert expects president-elect Barack Obama to make his fiscal 2010 budget recommendations in late February.
On the bright side, Massachusetts researchers may be well positioned to benefit from the Obama administration, Kispert said. Kispert expects Obama to issue an executive order to open embryonic stem cell reserves and to place a strong emphasis on clean energy.
Given the state of the economy, more federal funding may flow toward projects close to commercialization, Kispert said. Still, it may be an uphill battle to get those funds out of the federal funding organizations.
“(University research) has to fight as a priority with every other (project) going after discretionary funds,” Kispert said.
UMass researchers take NSF funds to bring 3-D modeling to the web
Among the academics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to win National Science Foundation (NSF) grants recently are two researchers who will use their $982,000 award to promote a web-based tool that supports the three-dimensional visualization and engineering analysis of biological structures.
The grant winners are biologist Betsy Dumont and mechanical engineer Ian Grosse, who will apply the funds to launch their Biomesh project. Biomesh.org is an online database meant to provide commercial or academic researchers worldwide with a way to enhance their study of biomechanical systems, including organs, skeletons, and cells, explained Dumont.
The Biomesh system enables biologists to apply finite element analysis (FEA) to biological questions. The biomesh site provides background information, a description of methods, a material properties database, and a library of finite element models of biological structures, said Dumont. Biotechnology researchers, for example, could use Biomesh resources to plan their own FEA studies of prosthetic devices. In addition to the online resources, the Biomesh project also involves extensive collaboration with biologists worldwide.
This sort of a project is unique in that it offers benefits both to society at large and to academic researchers, said Paul Kostecki, vice chancellor of research and engagement at UMass Amherst. The Biomesh capabilities will allow not just the ability to measure a jaw or muscle, but ways to “develop that information into something useful,” he said.
He also sees commercial potential to the project. “This is exciting work and happens more and more when there are two or three disciplines that approach a problem,” said Kostecki.
— Marc Songini, msongini@masshightech.com
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