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Universities With the Highest Research-and-Development Spending Financed by Business, FY 2015

By Chronicle Staff July 30, 2017

Of the more than $4 billion that universities spent on business-financed research and development in the 2015 fiscal year, over half went to the life sciences, and over a quarter to engineering. Business-financed R&D spending by Duke University, which tops the list, was almost entirely devoted to life sciences. Business-supported spending represents about 6 percent of all university R&D expenditures. (All dollar figures are in thousands.)

RankInstitutionAll R&D expenditures (000s)Environmental sciences (000s)Life sciences (000s)Math and computer sciences (000s)Physical sciences (000s)Psychology (000s)
1.Duke U.$240,640$68$238,279$56$291$78
2.State U. of New York Polytechnic Institute$187,237$0$435$0$0$0
3.Massachusetts Institute of Technology$150,001$5,600$9,146$12,104$4,524$0
4.Ohio State U.$119,272$330$70,852$5,453$544$26
5.U. of Pennsylvania$97,755$0$93,697$283$1,090$351

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Of the more than $4 billion that universities spent on business-financed research and development in the 2015 fiscal year, over half went to the life sciences, and over a quarter to engineering. Business-financed R&D spending by Duke University, which tops the list, was almost entirely devoted to life sciences. Business-supported spending represents about 6 percent of all university R&D expenditures. (All dollar figures are in thousands.)

RankInstitutionAll R&D expenditures (000s)Environmental sciences (000s)Life sciences (000s)Math and computer sciences (000s)Physical sciences (000s)Psychology (000s)Social sciences (000s)Other sciences (000s)Engineering (000s) All non-science and -engineering fields (000s)
1. Duke U. $240,640 $68 $238,279 $56 $291 $78 $392 $0 $1,104 $372
2. State U. of New York Polytechnic Institute $187,237 $0 $435 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $186,802 $0
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology $150,001 $5,600 $9,146 $12,104 $4,524 $0 $1,069 $10,586 $69,732 $37,240
4. Ohio State U. $119,272 $330 $70,852 $5,453 $544 $26 $89 $581 $40,270 $1,127
5. U. of Pennsylvania $97,755 $0 $93,697 $283 $1,090 $351 $34 $0 $1,461 $839
6. Stanford U. $90,177 $9,396 $51,375 $2,513 $8,189 $123 $600 $0 $17,748 $233
7. U. of California at San Diego $84,672 $3,016 $62,351 $2,503 $2,755 $1,399 $326 $84 $12,223 $15
8. U. of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center $81,076 $0 $79,424 $29 $561 $874 $188 $0 $0 $0
9. U. of California at Berkeley $75,480 $172 $4,570 $281 $6,586 $87 $3,799 $31,422 $26,398 $2,165
10. U. of Texas at Austin $75,268 $21,736 $2,423 $3,135 $3,258 $59 $926 $305 $39,610 $3,816
11. Texas A&M U. at College Station and Health Science Center $71,559 $1,483 $15,654 $351 $252 $2 $402 $4 $53,340 $71
12. U. of Utah $69,856 $860 $35,612 $1,817 $64 $0 $180 $0 $31,323 $0
13. U. of California at San Francisco $69,101 $0 $65,165 $0 $3,936 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
14. Johns Hopkins U.* $66,221 $174 $61,937 $184 $157 $0 $66 $18 $3,631 $54
15. U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor $60,408 $112 $36,919 $162 $564 $204 $607 $0 $21,656 $184
16. Washington U. in St. Louis $56,524 $0 $55,157 $110 $0 $326 $0 $0 $477 $454
17. U. of California at Los Angeles $55,613 $165 $42,464 $954 $2,592 $589 $91 $1,444 $6,692 $622
18. North Carolina State U. $52,836 $1,206 $24,358 $2,707 $782 $233 $1,941 $988 $19,970 $651
19. U. of Alabama at Birmingham $48,540 $6,067 $41,947 $0 $3 $5 $0 $0 $516 $2
20. Harvard U. $48,177 $2,860 $30,819 $216 $4,062 $59 $2,532 $4,410 $2,810 $409
21. U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign $45,550 $368 $14,804 $5,107 $3,480 $2,392 $350 $38 $18,186 $825
22. Yale U. $43,666 $0 $40,287 $53 $968 $134 $625 $76 $1,224 $299
23. U. of Washington $42,081 $3,369 $29,468 $1,163 $666 $71 $0 $0 $7,205 $139
24. Purdue U. at West Lafayette $42,017 $72 $15,450 $2,615 $2,887 $95 $226 $1 $20,083 $588
25. U. of Florida $41,375 $39 $34,123 $169 $1,707 $41 $46 $0 $5,213 $37
26. Georgia Institute of Technology $41,092 $107 $251 $9,463 $1,243 $254 $462 $36 $29,203 $73
27. U. of Colorado at Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus $40,956 $0 $40,800 $45 $16 $0 $16 $0 $65 $14
28. U. of California at Davis $40,945 $1,890 $26,777 $710 $644 $8 $313 $0 $9,890 $713
29. Cornell U. $40,690 $27 $35,389 $935 $706 $0 $121 $0 $3,512 $0
30. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai $40,181 $0 $40,181 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
31. Columbia U. $39,629 $1,017 $33,285 $1,470 $596 $52 $195 $0 $2,965 $49
32. Vanderbilt U. $34,673 $0 $28,787 $0 $335 $0 $3 $95 $1,382 $4,071
33. Pennsylvania State U. at University Park and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center $33,715 $674 $7,939 $1,557 $1,526 $178 $532 $0 $17,639 $3,670
34. U. of Southern California $32,862 $1 $23,525 $1,048 $2,003 $1 $541 $0 $5,393 $350
35. Emory U. $31,863 $0 $31,699 $0 $80 $0 $84 $0 $0 $0
36. Wichita State U. $31,257 $0 $0 $0 $0 $36 $0 $0 $30,587 $634
37. Virginia Tech $30,292 $383 $7,292 $328 $1,510 $302 $131 $0 $20,293 $53
38. U. of Miami $29,842 $4,760 $23,876 $18 $131 $307 $1 $0 $748 $1
39. Scripps Research Institute $29,798 $0 $29,798 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
40. U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill $28,998 $724 $25,618 $192 $1,370 $133 $357 $0 $105 $499
Top 40 institutions $2,541,895 $66,676 $1,511,933 $57,731 $60,078 $8,419 $17,245 $50,088 $709,456 $60,269
All 499 institutions $4,000,614 $127,302 $2,312,980 $99,419 $137,354 $14,657 $51,422 $63,663 $1,088,357 $105,460

* The Johns Hopkins University includes its Applied Physics Laboratory, with $1,137,000 in business-financed R&D expenditures in the 2015 fiscal year. The laboratory is an independent nonprofit research center that is affiliated with Johns Hopkins.

Note: Institutions included in this ranking are geographically separate campuses headed by a campus-level president or chancellor. More data on research-and-development spending are at www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvyherd/

Source: National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Higher Education Research and Development Survey, FY 2015

A version of this article appeared in the August 4, 2017, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
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