UMass sets research funding record

File Photo University of Massachusetts Medical School is among the UMass institutions benefiting from research funds.

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By State House News Service

Research spending at the University of Massachusetts reached a record $629 million during the past year and financial support for academic research on the five campuses has outpaced the growth of federal support for higher education research over a span of six years.

The bulk of the research being done at UMass – about 57 percent – has come in the life sciences field, aligning with a growth industry in Massachusetts, while 89 percent fell in the overall areas of science and engineering, according to the university.

UMass President Marty Meehan, who made the announcement on Tuesday, said research spending at UMass has doubled the level at which federal research funding to higher education institutions has increased since cutbacks during the 2008 recession.

Overall from 2008 to 2014, research expenditures at UMass grew by 39 percent compared with an 18 percent increase in federal support for higher education research. During that period, UMass expenditures grew from $435 million to $603 million, and were eclipsed again in fiscal 2015.

“Even in this era of faltering federal support for science, UMass continues to move ahead simply because the quality of the work being done on our campuses is so compelling,” Meehan said in a statement.

Expenditures at the medical school led the way in the system with $$250.3 million spent on research last year, followed by $213.9 million at UMass Amherst, $70.4 million at UMass Lowell, $62.4 million at UMass Boston, and $26.7 million at UMass Dartmouth.

While the bulk of the funding for research – 57 percent – comes from federal sources like the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation, institutional resources contributed 28 percent of research funding, industry and business chipped in 8 percent and and state and local funding grew this last year from 4 percent to 7 percent.

In fiscal 2014, the 2 percent increase in research spending at UMass outpaced the national average of 0.2 percent. That is last year for which comparisons are available to other universities.