UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A recently released annual report by the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) reports on the collective research prowess of its 14 member institutions, including Penn State.
Penn State's research expenditures totaled $836 million for the 2015-16 fiscal year, an increase of 4.5 percent from the previous year and the second highest in the University’s history.
“With annual research expenditures of $9.7 billion and spanning 11 states from the High Plains to the Eastern Seaboard, the universities of the Big Ten have an enormous influence in research and education far beyond their geographical footprint,” said Karen Hanson, BTAA chair and vice president for academic affairs and provost of the University of Minnesota, and Barbara McFadden Allen, BTAA executive director.
The 2015-16 BTAA report highlights some research collaborations of the network of universities and “details the collective power and progress of this enterprise.”
Penn State’s $836 million total in 2015-16 included increases in support from a number of federal agencies, including NASA, the National Institutes of Health, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services. Expenditures from all federal sources totaled $530,359,000.
Federal and all other research funding provides an important economic boost to the Commonwealth, having direct and indirect impacts in the form of new technologies, job creation and retention, and state and local tax revenues.
In addition, state support for research and outreach increased by 19.4 percent and private foundation giving increased by more than 17 percent. More information is available in Penn State’s Annual Report of Research Activity.