Executive Summary
Our systemwide office supports and facilitates the research and scholarly activities of faculty, researchers, staff, postdocs, and students. We seek to foster discovery that improves lives and addresses our society’s great challenges. To do this, we:
- provide seed funds to foster innovative research across all our disciplines and campuses
- oversee technology commercialization activities and foster relationships with industry partners
- manage proposal and award processing as well as regulatory compliance
- ensure integrity and commitment to research ethics, including safe treatment of human participants and animal subjects
- manage 12 interdisciplinary academic centers and institutes that facilitate research in key areas such as the environment, transportation, ethics and the law, social science, and research computing
- Operate corporate engagement center that manages a portfolio of over 64 companies
- Build partnerships with HBCUs and TCUs
Headcounts: Fall 2023
Unit-Specific Measures & Data
- $1.23 billion annual research expenditures
- 30% growth in awards from FY19-FY23
- 60% from direct federal sources, FY23
- NIH is single largest funder, up 21% YoY FY23
- NSF is second largest, up 30% YoY FY23
- 23 startups in FY23
- On-target for MPACT 2025 progress metrics
Organizational Structure/Design
Research Capacity Building
- Biosafety Level 3
- Research Animal Resources
- Strategic Partnerships and Research Collaborative
- 12 interdisciplinary centers
Integrity and Compliance
- HRPP and IRB
- IACUC
- Office of Biotech Activities Oversight
- Research Integrity and Compliance
Research Administration
- Sponsored projects administration
- Office of Cost analysis
Technology Commercialization + Communications, HR, Finance, Strategic Initiatives, IT, Research Advancement
Key Areas of Strength & Strategic Opportunities
Strength: Increasing research expenditures and startups
The state of the University’s research enterprise is strong, with record expenditures and the second-largest research award levels in the University’s history in FY23. We have increased success in bringing our researchers’ inventions to market, including a record number of startups and strengthening coordination with the University’s corporate engagement efforts.
Strength: Increasing research partnerships and relationships
We are actively building partnerships and relationships nationally and internationally to foster research partnerships, seeding grants to jump-start our capabilities in areas of high federal and state investment, and supporting large, interdisciplinary research proposals.
Strategic Opportunity: Research infrastructure
Our biggest challenge is that our research infrastructure is not keeping up with our growing research enterprise nor the increasing regulatory burden, putting some of our basic capabilities at risk (from research award support to animal research facilities). For example, over the last five years, UMN’s research awards were up 30 percent, but during the same time there was a 7.6 percentr decrease in support staff. In the last 10 years (2013-2023), there has been a 173 percent increase in regulations and policies affecting federal research, according to the COGR Annual Report. Our budget model does not account for the research growth.
Strategic Opportunity: Strategic larger project
Minnesota has amazing opportunity to become destination for an DoD aerospace campus, DOE industrial decarb pilot facility, and biomanufacturing hub.