In the public sector, California was the state with the most institutions in the top 25 for the number of principal investigators leading research-and-development projects, with five, while New York had the most in the private nonprofit sector, also five. In both sectors, the institution with the most principal investigators in the 2016 fiscal year was far ahead of the rest of the pack.
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Public institutions
| 1. | U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor | 4,874 | 16,076 | 20,950 |
| 2. | Pennsylvania State U. at University Park and Hershey Medical Centera | 3,017 | 10,305 | 13,322 |
| 3. | Texas A&M U. at College Station and Health Science Center | 2,876 | 10,120 | 12,996 |
| 4. | U. of Wisconsin at Madison | 2,821 | 14,326 | 17,147 |
| 5. | U. of Minnesota-Twin Cities | 2,724 | 11,379 | 14,103 |
| 6. | Colorado State U. at Fort Collinsa | 2,635 | 6,558 | 9,193 |
| 7. | U. of Washington | 2,458 | 11,914 | 14,372 |
| 8. | U. of California at Los Angeles | 2,216 | 9,532 | 11,748 |
| 9. | Ohio State U. | 1,964 | 7,368 | 9,332 |
| 10. | U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 1,858 | 7,530 | 9,388 |
| 11. | U. of Pittsburgh main campus | 1,856 | 7,193 | 9,049 |
| 12. | U. of California at Berkeley | 1,842 | 7,913 | 9,755 |
| 13. | U. of California at Davis | 1,806 | 8,917 | 10,723 |
| 14. | U. of Floridab | 1,735 | 8,009 | 9,744 |
| 15. | U. of Kentucky | 1,558 | 4,018 | 5,576 |
| 16. | U. of California at San Diego | 1,555 | 9,190 | 10,745 |
| 17. | U. of South Florida | 1,503 | 2,694 | 4,197 |
| 18. | U. of Arizona | 1,464 | 6,420 | 7,884 |
| 19. | Purdue U. at West Lafayette | 1,443 | 8,633 | 10,076 |
| 20. | Rutgers U. at New Brunswickb | 1,394 | 6,436 | 7,830 |
| 21. | U. of California at Irvine | 1,326 | 3,225 | 4,551 |
| 22. | U. of Maryland at College Park | 1,312 | 8,957 | 10,269 |
| 23. | Georgia Institute of Technologya | 1,263 | 7,240 | 8,503 |
| 24. | U. of Colorado at Boulder | 1,251 | 1,840 | 3,091 |
| 25. | Indiana U. at Bloomington | 1,238 | 6,122 | 7,360 |
| | Median for 393 institutions | 85 | 362 | 456 |
Private nonprofit institutions
| 1. | Johns Hopkins U.bc | 3,089 | 20,302 | 23,391 |
| 2. | Cornell U. | 1,738 | 8,691 | 10,429 |
| 3. | Stanford U. | 1,724 | 7,752 | 9,476 |
| 4. | U. of Pennsylvania | 1,665 | 10,914 | 12,579 |
| 5. | Duke U. | 1,566 | 7,982 | 9,548 |
| 6. | Emory U. | 1,400 | 5,960 | 7,360 |
| 7. | Washington U. in St. Louis | 1,368 | 6,442 | 7,810 |
| 8. | Columbia U. | 1,334 | 7,892 | 9,226 |
| 9. | New York U. | 1,265 | 5,462 | 6,727 |
| 10. | Yale U. | 1,259 | 7,166 | 8,425 |
| 11. | Northwestern U. | 1,196 | 6,751 | 7,947 |
| 12. | Harvard U. | 1,131 | 6,442 | 7,573 |
| 13. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 994 | 8,984 | 9,978 |
| 14. | Vanderbilt U.b | 947 | 5,215 | 6,162 |
| 15. | U. of Southern California | 927 | 5,762 | 6,689 |
| 16. | U. of Rochester | 904 | 3,422 | 4,326 |
| 17. | George Washington U. | 892 | 1,905 | 2,797 |
| 18. | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai | 859 | 2,058 | 2,917 |
| 19. | Case Western Reserve U. | 842 | 2,180 | 3,022 |
| 20. | U. of Miami | 752 | 3,077 | 3,829 |
| 21. | Baylor College of Medicine | 722 | 4,625 | 5,347 |
| 22. | Boston U. | 695 | 3,316 | 4,011 |
| 23. | U. of Chicago | 677 | 4,083 | 4,760 |
| 24. | Wake Forest U. | 624 | 1,192 | 1,816 |
| 25. | Brown U.b | 540 | 2,899 | 3,439 |
| | Median for 247 institutions | 33 | 124 | 168 |
a The numbers of other and total R&D employees were imputed.
b The numbers of principal investigators, other R&D employees, and total R&D employees were imputed.
c Figures for Johns Hopkins University includes the Applied Physics Laboratory, an affiliated independent nonprofit research center, which had 13,116 R&D employees in the 2016 fiscal year.
Note: Principal investigators are employees designated by their institutions to oversee research-and-development projects or programs and to be responsible for those projects’ scientific and technical direction. Co-investigators who share such responsibilities are also counted in that category. Other R&D employees include all other personnel and students paid from research-and-development accounts no matter how much they received. Missing data were imputed based on the previous year’s data and the reported data of peer institutions in the current survey cycle. More data can be found here. Questions or comments on the Almanac should be sent to the Almanac editor.
Source: National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Higher Education Research and Development Survey; Chronicle analysis