By SUSAN JONES
Pitt’s second annual research report is not only popping up at offices throughout the University, but it’s also making a thud on the desks of presidents, provosts and research leaders at all the top research schools in the country.
“One of the interesting parts of my job is there’s a competitive ecosystem of these things among peers,” said Rob Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research. “And so part of my job is making making (the annual report) show up competitively excellent on my peers’ desks.”
After Pitt issued its first-ever research report in 2022, Rutenbar said he noticed a significant increase in the peer institutions that sent him their research reports, “which we take as positive evidence that we scored.”
This year’s 70-page report (which also can be found online) contains information about where Pitt gets its research funds and where those funds are spent, along with short synopses of more than 50 ongoing projects at Pitt. Its title is “Convergence” and has a section on “Team Science” and on collaborations with the community.
In fiscal year 2023, sponsored research at Pitt had:
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4,581 proposals submitted.
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1,690 grants awarded.
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644 unique direct sponsors.
The report, which was published in December and has been in the works for several months, touts Pitt’s ranking as third in National Institutes of Health funding, as ranked by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, for federal fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021 to Sept. 30, 2022). During that period, Pitt received $675.4 million from NIH, behind only Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Francisco.
Rutenbar said third is the highest Pitt has ever been in this ranking, although the University has consistently been in the top 10 in recent years.
For fiscal year 2023, the raw numbers from NIH, which were released in early January, show Pitt with the seventh highest funding for a university, at $658.3 million.
Over the past five years, research expenditures at Pitt have increased from $860 million in 2019 to $1.16 billion in fiscal year 2023. In addition to the NIH money, there are several other funding sources for medical research and work in the humanities and other areas, which puts Pitt “reliably north of a billion dollars in research volume,” Rutenbar said.
In 2022-23, 66 percent was spent on medical research, plus another 13.3 percent in the health sciences. Direct federal sources provided nearly 68 percent of the funding, along with another 19 percent that came indirectly from federal agencies.
Recently, Pitt has seen an increase in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from various foundations, Rutenbar said. For instance, in fall 2021, the Richard K. Mellon Foundation gave its largest grant ever — $100 million to be distributed over 10 years — to Pitt to help develop the life sciences research and manufacturing program BioForge at the Hazelwood Green site.
While medicine and the health sciences continue to dominate Pitt’s research expenditures, there’s also been work to focus attention on the humanities. In 2019, Shelome Gooden became Pitt’s first assistant vice chancellor for research in the humanities, arts, social sciences and related fields.
Last year, a program manager from the National Endowment for the Humanities came to Pitt to lead a coaching workshop “for people writing proposals in that space and had one on one meetings with a whole bunch of folks … and that went incredibly well,” Rutenbar said.
“One of the unique pleasures of being in a comprehensive research institution, is that there’s an incredible array of faculty doing stuff different than what I know,” said Rutenbar, whose background is in engineering. “Pitt has artists, it has writers and other creative folks and humanists and social scientists and a business school and a law school and a social work school, and all of the STEM stuff and all of the clinical stuff and public health. One of the fun parts of putting this (report) together is reaching out across the scholarship spectrum and finding cool stuff.”
Some of the projects featured in the report include:
Rethinking Traumatic Injury at the Cellular Level: Led by Jason Sperry, professor of surgery and in the Department of Critical Care Medicine.
Studying and Communicating the Danger of Vaping: Led by Kambez H. Benam, associate professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, and in the Department of Bioengineering in the Swanson School of Engineering.
Rethinking Asthma: Led by Anuradha Ray, professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, and UPMC endowed professor of lung immunology
Spinal Cord Stimulator Can Return Post-stroke Mobility: Led by Elvira Pirondini, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation in the School of Medicine
Modeling Galactic Formations to Test World’s Fastest Supercomputer: Led by Evan Schneider, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Following the Steps of America’s Shakespeare: Led by Laurence Glasco, associate professor in the Dietrich School’s Department of History, who is writing a biography of August Wilson
Chipping Migrating Monarchs: Led by Hee Lee, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering
Forever Chemicals: Led by Carla Ng, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Fabric of Communities: Led by Caitlin Bruce, associate professor of communication in the Dietrich School, on how murals and graffiti vivify public spaces.
Developing a Textbook for an Indigenous Language: Led by Alana DeLoge, an instructor in the Department of Linguistics in the Dietrich School, and the Quechua program coordinator in the Less-Commonly Taught Languages Center.
Connecting Black-owned Businesses with the Student Market: Led by Michael Hamilton, assistant professor of business analytics and operations at the Katz Graduate School of Business
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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