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.)
| 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