UC San Diego averaged nearly $5 million a day in new research funding during the past fiscal year, hauling in a total of $1.73 billion to study everything from Antarctica’s melting glaciers to better ways to prevent people from suffering heart attacks.
The annual figure is about $30 million less than it was the previous year. But the school will remain among the 10 largest research universities in the nation, keeping company with such institutions as Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan and UCLA.
UCSD was founded in 1960, when it absorbed the existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, an elite seaside center that collected nearly $302 million during the fiscal year ending on June 30.
Scripps continued to rake in money for its studies of the environment, including a $6 million grant from NOAA that will enable scientists to further analyze the impact of industrial waste dumped in the ocean off Southern California years ago.
UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering also prospered, winning roughly one-third of all new awards given to the campus.
Jacobs is involved in a wide array of research. Earlier this year, scientists used the school’s outdoor shake table in Scripps Ranch to examine how well a 10-story earthquake would stand up to temblor like the magnitude-6.7 quake that erupted in the Northridge area in 1994. Engineers also got money to continue developing algorithms to operate self-driving cars.
“The most important takeaway from this year’s numbers is to recognize that UC San Diego’s commitment to innovation and research excellence remains world-class and steadfast,” Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said in a statement.
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