A&M first in state to spend more than $1B on research

Texas A&M University has become the first university in the state to surpass $1 billion spending on research within a year, according to a university release.

College officials announced Wednesday that the university spent $1.13 billion on research in fiscal year 2020 — an increase of 18.8 percent from 2019, during which the university spent $952 million.

The money poured into projects at the university’s flagship in College Station, its campuses in Galveston and Qatar, and via state agencies within the Texas A&M University System.

“I commend university leadership and staff for their work to keep Texas A&M at the forefront of research and discovery,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a written statement. “The State of Texas will continue to invest in higher education and work with our university partners to build a brighter future for Texas.”

A&M System Chancellor John Sharp credited A&M’s principal investigators, the governor and the Texas Legislature for their combined focus on research and attracting top researchers and faculty to propel initiatives.

Around 44 percent of A&M’s total spending went to life sciences, which includes much of the university’s in agriculture and medical fields; 32 percent went to engineering; 10 percent to geosciences, atmosphere and ocean sciences; and 5 percent to fields that did not relate to engineering or science. The remainder was divided among social sciences, computer and information sciences, mathematics and statistics and psychology, among others.

The milestone in research spending is a first within Texas and puts A&M in the ranks of peer universities that have spent more than $1 billion, including UCLA, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston was the only other research institution to report more than $900 million in research spending.

Abbott’s University Research Initiative invested $43.7 million to attract 12 top researchers in the country to the university, according to a 2021 report. Sharp also noted that exceeding $1 billion in research spending was one of his main goals when he was named chancellor in 2011.

The Chancellor’s Research Initiative, launched in 2013, has given $200 million in awards and $5.8 million in scholarships and fellowships to attract top researchers. Sharp also invested $5 million in seed money to appoint top scholars throughout the world for up to a year. As a result, the number of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine members within A&M’s faculty has increased from 19 in 2011 to 48 in 2020.

Mark A. Barteau, vice president for research at A&M, said the university has been growing as a major research institution over the last two decades. Outside funding and grants have made a range of important research possible, including

A&M’s International Ocean Discovery program, which performs scientific research in the seven seas, and more recently, COVID-19 vaccine development and production. Smaller grants, estimated to be a few hundred thousand dollars, also have helped individual faculty explore their research interests.

“A&M has been making very significant steps in building research capacity,” Barteau said.

It’s “onward and upward” from here, Barteau said. But money cannot not be a measuring stick for research, though it does help the university put its research into practice at a faster pace than other institutions might be able to achieve, he emphasized.

“It’s nice to count the dollars, but part of the message is that the research enterprise at an institution like this also strives for societal impact, and it also requires a strong university across the board, not just in the STEM disciplines,” Barteau said.