The University recently began to receive research funding through the federal stimulus package, which will ultimately total nearly 10 percent of the year's research funding.
The University had received more than $38 million in stimulus research funding as of last week, and though it does not have its final totals yet, Jeff Blank, assistant vice president for research, said it has "probably received another $10 million in the past 10 days."
The total in funding for this year and next year will come close to $50 million, distributed through 100 to 110 separate awards, Blank said.
He added that the majority of the funds are from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, which is distributing about two-thirds of the funding.
The agencies had several different methods to distribute the funds.
The NSF and the NIH both established new grant programs, soliciting applications that are subjected to a peer review process before making awards, Blank said.
The agencies also have supplemented funding for current research, such as providing funds to continue research for a year in addition to the original time frame, Blank added. The third method of stimulus fund distribution is through reach-back awards, when agencies fund researchers who were originally not supported.
"They [the Obama administration] wanted to make sure that it was very transparent and very fair," Blank said, "and that's why they wanted to make sure that a pretty strenuous review process was in case for these funds to be allocated."
He noted that this also results in a stricter reporting process, including a quarterly report updating the federal government about how funds have been used and what jobs were created and retained.\n"This is a stimulus bill," Blank said. "It's all about economic development and getting people new jobs and keeping current jobs."
He described the research stimulus funds as "an economic development engine for the country," explaining that the funding could have a ripple effect in the equipment being purchased across the country, the materials used to build the equipment and the supplies being purchased.
The research stimulus is "having the effect that the [Obama] administration intended in that it is stimulating opportunities for jobs," Blank said, as well as funding research. The funds are being awarded across all the research departments at the University, he added.
"It's in Engineering, it's in the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing," Blank said. "It's everything from studying cancer research to looking at how the solar system was formed."
Asst. Astronomy Prof. Philip Arras has received federal stimulus funding for his research on extrasolar planets. Arras said he first submitted a grant proposal to the NSF, learning later that it was funded through stimulus money.
"I think it's just they had extra money and so they funded a proposal that maybe would not have been funded if it wasn't for that," he said.
Arras will use the funding to create physical models of planets orbiting stars other than the sun to determine "how heating by star light affects atmosphere on the planet and how you can probe that with observations by telescope," he said.
Physics Prof. Thomas Gallagher is another recipient of federal stimulus funding. The stimulus funding will support his research bridging the classical and the quantum mechanical, working to connect these two points of view - "which classical things can you really do with an atom," Gallagher explained.
The Nursing School's Rural Health Care Research Center also has received research stimulus funding, said Beth Merwin, associate dean for research at the Nursing School. The school applied for and received stimulus funding to support a student internship at the Rural Health Center, providing for five interns during summer 2009 and eight to 10 during summer 2010.
More recently, the Nursing School received funding that will enable it to upgrade and obtain more laptop computers for both the Rural Health Care Research Center and the Center for Nursing Research, she said.
Merwin added that the strict reporting process required by the federal government will not interfere with research, noting that the quarterly reports are less in-depth than the annual reports.
"We're very grateful to have the funding, and it is certainly well worth providing whatever information is requested on a quarterly basis," she said.
Though the University will benefit from the influx of research funding, Blank said there is no expectation for funding to continue at this level.
"It's really just a one time investment over two years," he said, noting that the Obama administration has been very clear that the purpose is only to stimulate the economy.
"This is a historically unique opportunity for research funding and U.Va is [well] poised ... to strategically access the funds," Blank said. "Fortunately our strategic priorities have aligned well with the funding agencies with stimulus and we're starting to reap those benefits right now"
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