VCU RECEIVES $363 MILLION IN RESEARCH FUNDS; 25% INCREASE SINCE 2018

LINDSEY WEST

Contributing Writer

THE UNIVERSITY ANNOUNCED A RECORD amount of research funds collected, totaling about $363 million for the 2021 fiscal year. Nearly all VCU departments received an increase in research budget, according to P. Srirama Rao, VCU’s vice president for research and innovation.

VCU departments that received funding include business, social work, nursing, the college of health professions, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, the college of humanities and sciences, arts, medicine, and government and public affairs. Medicine received the most funding with over $183 million.

Various VCU schools and departments received the research grants for their proposed research ideas on July 1, the start of the fiscal year, Rao said.

According to Rao, who has no relation to VCU President Michael Rao, the money came from national funding, state funding and funding from industry or foundations gifts. For example, the Massey Cancer Center received national funding from the National Cancer Institute.

“They [researchers] compete on the national scene and they receive this funding,” Rao said. “So for instance, if you are a fac ulty in mass communication and you wrote a grant and you got funded this time around from a national agency, the funding would flow to your col lege or school.” engineering and systems biology, according to his faculty biography.

The university’s research funding totals $362,906,366. VCU ranks highly in research funding in com parison to other public research universities, Rao said.

According to the National Sci ence Foundation, VCU ranks No. 64 for Higher Education Research and Development expenditures for pub lic institutions.

VCU’s MCV campus received more funding than the Monroe Park campus, however the Monroe Park research funds, including the College of Engineering, the College of Humanities and Sciences and the School of Business, have been increasing, Rao said. The Qatar campus receives funding from the Qatar Foundation.

Fong is the director of the Center for Integrative Life Sciences Education (CILSE) and the Integrative Life Sciences Doctoral Program at VCU.

VCU departments and schools are continuously beginning research projects and ideas as well as working on studies that have already begun. Fong has been working on a collaborative project with the Science Museum of Virginia and the University of Richmond, analyzing the heat levels across Richmond and the subsequent impacts on health.

“This summer we were going around and measuring air quality, using air quality sensors in a similar fashion, which can be linked to things like respiratory illness, asthma, other things like that,” Fong said. “So we were also trying to figure out if there’s variation on air quality and related illnesses on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, essentially.”

Both undergraduate and graduate students have the chance to become involved in research at VCU, Fong said.

“The medical school was roughly half of the entire 363 [million],” Rao said, “so they are the biggest recipient of funding. Following the medical school, it was the school of education, en gineering and humanities and sciences, if you look at our dual campuses.”

The university is partici pating in a handful of ongo ing research projects. One includes research by Stephen Fong, a professor in the department of chemical and life science engineering specializing in metabolic

“It really becomes an opportunity for undergraduates and graduate students to be doing things outside of the classroom, to be having experiences that are really value-added that you just don’t get by reading about it,” Fong said.

The application process for receiving research grants presents research opportunities to many institutions, professionals and students. Proposals tend to be 15 to 25 pages of scientific or scholarly content, a budget and paperwork related to VCU research, Fong said. is funding that they’ve been successful at obtaining by going through that process of writing a proposal, getting it reviewed and getting it funded,” Fong said.

See RESEARCH on page 3

ENGINEERING $31,368,257.00

EDUCATION $35,536,647.00

CHS $22,338,517.00

ARTS (INCLUDES VCUQ) $40,046,399.00

MEDICINE $183,412,511.00

WILDER $2,067,189.00

OTHER (OVPRI, PROVOST, FINANCE) $24,910,430.00

VP FOR FINANCE & ADMIN $239,353.00

VP FOR RESEARCH $21,046,855.00

PROVOST OFFICE $918,743.00

VP FOR STUDENT AFFAIRS $440,000.00

VP FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS $2,265,479.00

TOTAL $362,906,366.00

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