Chemical research at the University of Colorado at Boulder ranks third in the United States for the amount of off-campus funding it attracts.
The ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder department of chemistry and biochemistry received $13.9 million in outside grant support in 1995, a total exceeded only by the University of California at Berkeley with $15.6 million and the California Institute of Technology with $14.9 million. The rankings appear in the Sept. 1 edition of Chemical and Engineering News.
"Our success at obtaining so much outside funding is a good measure of our national reputation because applications for research grants are reviewed by faculty at other universities," said Professor John Birks, department chair.
Seventy-one percent of the ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder money came from the federal government. The largest non-federal funding agency was the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which supports the work of Nobel laureate Thomas Cech in addition to other faculty members and graduate students.
Funding from non-federal sources is important at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder, Birks said. When only federal funding is considered, the department ranks seventh nationally.
Rounding out the top 10 universities cited in the ranking of off-campus funding, beginning with No. 4, were Penn State, Harvard, UCLA, University of Maryland at College Park, Purdue, Stanford and MIT.
The department of chemistry and biochemistry has 49 faculty members who teach about 2,900 students each semester, including 364 chemistry and biochemistry majors and 218 graduate students.