Nearly 800 grants and contracts funded SDSU research on climate change, early childhood development, renewable energy and more in 2011-12.
SDSU professor Mark Sussman is among those who received grant funding for his research this past year.
San Diego State University researchers secured approximately $127 million in research grants and contracts during the last fiscal year, it was announced today. SDSU researchers received a total of 769 awards in 2011-12 worth $127,432,258.
The grants supported research in critical areas like climate change, early childhood development and renewable energy.
Among the faculty receiving grants this past year, Kee Moon (mechanical engineering) along with his colleagues at the University of Washington and MIT, were awarded $18.5 million to host a new National Science Foundation Sensorimotor Neural Engineering Center which is developing technologies to understand and translate the way the human brain controls movement into advanced prosthetics for amputees, sensor-electrode systems for reanimating paralyzed limbs, and home-based rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries.
“Across a broad range of fields, our researchers are addressing critical regional and world problems,” said SDSU President Elliot Hirshman. “In addition, our research provides opportunities for our students to get hands-on experience in their field of study, enhancing their education and preparing them for their futures.”
NIH funding strong
In 2011-12, SDSU was awarded 100 grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling more than $28 million. This includes a five-year $2.2 million grant for SDSU’s Infant and Child Development Lab led by Margaret Friend (psychology) to measure language comprehension in babies.
In addition, Mel Hovell (public health) received $1.3 million from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to study how to better protect children from second-hand smoke exposure. SDSU is in the top 14 percent of all universities receiving funding from this NIH institute, which also supports the work of several SDSU heart researchers.
Diverse research
SDSU also received a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Labor for the Imperial Valley campus to establish a Renewable Energy Generation Training and Demonstration Center.
“Our research engagement spans from direct interactions with local and regional collaborators to more indirect inquiries into the fundamental processes underlying many of the social, biological and environmental problems facing our world today,” said Stephen Welter, Vice President for Research. “Scholarship at SDSU is wonderfully diverse. In addition to scientific exploration, we embrace areas such as creative and performing arts, and explore the human condition through literature, historical analyses and issues of social justice.”
San Diego State is among the country’s top research universities and is designated a “research university” with high research activity by the Carnegie Foundation.