Oregon Research report released by UO's RIGE

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The 2013 Oregon Research report – a newly released publication from the University of Oregon office for Research, Innovation and Graduate Education – focuses on how best to establish and guide the next generation of scientists.

“New discoveries are happening all around us,” says Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the UO Graduate School. “New researchers—inspired by the faculty members of the past and present—are emerging every day, and the regenerating cycle of research, education and innovation continues.”

The report contains photos, feature stories, profiles and data, focusing on everything from the UO’s new NIH-sponsored systems biology center to the graduate student research forum to the impact of research on the Oregon economy. A few examples of UO research highlights from the report include:

  • Religious studies professor Stephen Shoemaker was recently awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the National Humanities Center and membership in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University. He was also awarded a senior fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University in Budapest.
  • Kevin Butler, assistant professor, Department of Computer and Information Science; Mark Carey, assistant professor of history, Robert D. Clark Honors College; Eric Corwin, assistant professor, Department of Physics, all received National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Awards — the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early career faculty members.
  • UO biologist Jessica Green was named a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, selected because of her prior achievement and exceptional promise.
  • Janis Weeks, a member of the Department of Biology, the Institute of Neuroscience, and the African Studies Program, received a Grand Challenges Explorations Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  • Phil Fisher, UO psychology professor and Prevention Science Institute member, and Patricia Chamberlain of the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) will lead the newly launched Translational Drug Abuse Prevention Center, made possible by a $9 million grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
  • UO research innovations generated $7.4 million in licensing revenue for the Oregon economy.
  • In fiscal year 2012, the UO family of entrepreneurial startup companies generated more than 270 jobs and nearly $40 million in company income in Oregon alone.
  • Mobile technology pioneer Ed Colligan ’90 is committed to inspiring today’s Ducks through the establishment of the Colligan User Interface Design Challenge, which challenges UO students from all programs and classes to create an attractive and dynamic graphical user interface designed for use on a mobile platform. Colligan was at the center of a mobile computing revolution as CEO of Palm Inc. He left Palm to found Handspring.

The release of the annual UO Report on Sponsored Activity coincides with the release of the Oregon Research. The annual report on sponsored activity includes an executive summary focusing on proposal submissions, sponsored awards made to the UO, expenditures made with sponsored dollars and indirect cost reimbursements to the university from the sponsors. 

The report itself provides detailed figures and charts related to sponsored activity. A few of the report’s findings include the following:

  • Sponsored expenditures — outside dollars spent in support of UO research, teaching and service activities — was $120.4 million in 2013, and was essentially unchanged from the previous year. The implementation by the federal government of sequestration decreased the amount of funding available for research by the federal government, and sponsored awards to the UO declined to $97.6M for FY13. 
  • Federal agencies continue to be the largest source of sponsored dollars, accounting for $87.1M (72.3%) of the total.
  • The National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation are the three largest sponsor agencies to the UO.

“The UO remains a busy hub of research activity in which the creation of new knowledge is happening at a brisk pace,” Espy says. “Researchers at the UO continue to compete successfully for extramural funding, which pumps millions of dollars into our region’s economy and creates a higher quality of life for all residents.”

- from the UO office of Research, Innovation and Graduate Education