Annual Report 2003 Query Tool

Investigators Reach New High in Research Expenditures

Cancer Imaging With Radiopharmaceuticals

Arthritis Rehabilitation Research and Training

A Home for Swine Studies

Rethinking Mathematics Instruction

Seeking Answers to Coronary Artery Disease

Director Named for LSC

Maize Genome Mapping Project Nears Completion

Investigators Reach New High in Research Expenditures

External Sponsorship of MU Research Tops the $166 Million Mark

By Jim Coleman, Vice Provost for Research

For more than 150 years, scientists and scholars at the University of Missouri-Columbia have used the power of science and scholarship to improve the lives of Missouri's citizens. As the head of MU's research division, I am committed to helping our faculty researchers maintain and improve upon this exemplary record of achievement. I think you'll agree that this, our annual report of grants and contracts for FY 2003, shows conclusively that we are building on a firm foundation.

Last year, for example, expenditures from external sponsors -- dollars from non-MU sources spent by investigators during the course of their work -- surpassed $166 million, an increase of 17 percent over FY 2002 and the largest total ever recorded at MU. Our sponsored research spending from federal sources alone topped $100 million in FY 2003, also a record. From 1994-2001 (the most recent years for which figures are available) the National Science Foundation reported our rate of federal expenditure growth has surpassed that of every public member of the Association of American Universities.

Such numbers demonstrate that our faculty researchers are well equipped to compete successfully against the nation's best researchers for highly competitive grants. They also demonstrate the resilience of MU's research enterprise during tough economic times.

One key to the success of our researchers has been MU's commitment to world-class facilities. Here too recent grants and contracts point toward a bright future. In this report you will learn more about newly funded projects that will greatly enhance the University's research enterprise. Among them are:

A $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that will fund the development of a new Cancer Imaging Center -- a crucial component in the University's bid to become one of the nation's designated "comprehensive cancer care" centers.

A $10.4 million grant to fund MU's new Swine Research and Resource Center, a facility that will solidify MU's position as a top institution in comparative medicine research.

A $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum, an important research center dedicated to improving the way middle-grade teachers help students master mathematics.

A $4.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund the Missouri Arthritis Research, Rehabilitation and Training Center, MU's internationally-renowned center for improving quality of life for people with arthritis.

Faculty scientists and scholars associated with these and other MU centers for research and education have already established a record of excellence. We're confident that this new funding will allow them to continue their groundbreaking research for many years to come.

Externally Sponsored Grants & Contracts FY 2003

This year's report also provides an update on the progress of MU's new $64 million Life Sciences Center. The 235,000 square foot facility, funded by $34 million in federal grants and $30 million in state appropriations, will provide laboratory space for 350 faculty, staff, students and postdoctoral fellows. Interdisciplinary investigations conducted in the new center will not just raise the University's intellectual capital, but will be a boon to the state economy as well. Life sciences research will generate quality jobs, help turn discoveries into marketable technologies, produce products that create new businesses and corporate partnerships and attract a new generation of prominent faculty scientists and quality student researchers to MU.

Our ultimate goal is to position MU and its Life Sciences Center as the cornerstone in the statewide effort to transform Missouri into "the world's life sciences gateway." Already we are one of only six universities nationwide with programs in agriculture, engineering, medicine and veterinary medicine on the same campus. And when faculty from these areas team up with our outstanding faculty working in arts and sciences, human environmental sciences, nursing, and reactor-based research, no other university, either here in the United States or abroad, will be able to match the unique combination of resources that MU will bring to Missouri's "high tech corridor."

MU research is on the move, and the nation is taking notice. As Provost Brady Deaton recently put it: "The knowledge our faculty acquire in the laboratory not only expands to the classroom but also to the state and the world, providing solutions to both immediate and long term international problems."