By Eileen Conrad

For the eighth consecutive year, research support from external sources reached a record high at UC Santa Barbara when a total of $161.4 million was received from federal and state agencies, corporations, and foundations.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004, this “extramural” funding in the form of contracts and grants for research, training, and public-service programs had increased 12 percent over the previous year’s record of $143.9 million. The campus was awarded more than 1,081 research contracts and grants last year.

External research funding is considered the lifeblood of a premier research university. In the last decade, such funds have nearly doubled at UCSB.

“This magnificent achievement in research funding is yet another indicator of the vitality and enormous intellectual resources of the campus and the extraordinary contributions of UCSB’s prize-winning faculty,” said Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “I have found it tremendously rewarding to witness UCSB’s rapid upward trajectory in every measure of excellence over the years.”

Steve Gaines, acting vice chancellor for research at UCSB, attributed the increase in awards to the campus’s collaborative research environment and the exceptional quality of those involved.

“This increase is really remarkable,” said Gaines, who also serves as director of UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. “It is a significant increase over last year’s record total and the biggest dollar increase in more than a decade. One of the important things the statistics show is the continued innovation of our faculty and the superb contributions of graduate and undergraduate students who work with them to create a better world.”

Support from federal agencies increased by 14 percent over the previous fiscal year, accounting for $121 million, or 75 percent of the total. Continuing a decade-long trend, the National Science Foundation was the largest single source.

Additional evidence of UCSB’s intellectual and research capital consisted of several large awards from the U.S. Army, including $17.2 million to establish the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB). Funding from the Department of Energy increased by 41 percent to $7.7 million.

Support from industry totaled $9.5 million, up 40 percent over the previous year.

Among the research grants awarded to the campus were the following:

—Up to $50 million over five years from the Army for the ICB, a partnership among UCSB, Caltech, MIT, and industry to conduct interdisciplinary research at the interface of biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials science, and systems engineering.

—A contract of up to $15.8 million over four years from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Microsystems Technologies Office for a research program known as “LASOR: Label-Switched Optical Router.” The goal is to demonstrate systems that will route Internet data optically without the bottlenecks of current optical-to-electrical connections.

	The larger chart, at left, indicates the $161.4 million total in sponsored awards UCSB received in 2003-04, while the smaller pie breaks down the 75 percent that came from federal sources into agencies or departments.