Jacie Legois, left to right, a horticulture student intern; Ajay Nair, professor and chair of horticulture; and Ray Wilmes, a horticulture graduate student, plant bell peppers at the Alliant Energy Solar Farm at Iowa State University. Larger photo. Photo by Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University.
AMES, Iowa – Iowa State researchers attracted a record $346.2 million in external funding for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That's the third straight year of record research funding and the second straight of more than $300 million.
Overall, Iowa State's total external funding for fiscal year 2024 increased to $544.6 million, rising $14.1 million and 2.7% over the prior fiscal year's total of $530.5 million.
"Achieving a third consecutive record for sponsored research and growth in overall external funding strengthens Iowa State University as a national research powerhouse and leading land-grant university," said Iowa State President Wendy Wintersteen. "This success is the result of our faculty and staff researchers' excellence in securing competitive funds to address complex challenges, innovate solutions for business and industry and generate economic opportunities that benefit all Iowans."
Over the 2022 to 2024 fiscal years, Iowa State researchers have attracted record external funding of $284.2 million, $301.3 million and $346.2 million to support their experiments and projects.
The latest research total also includes record amounts of federal and non-federal research funding. Those records are $236.3 million in federal support (the previous record was $206.9 million in fiscal year 2023) and $110 million in non-federal support (the previous record was $94.5 million in fiscal year 2023).
Iowa State's research leader said the records are a good measure of the value and relevance of research across campus.
"The vision for Iowa State research is to foster human creativity, fuel innovation and forge new frontiers that enable our communities, partners and stakeholders to flourish," said Peter Dorhout, the vice president for research. "The record research funding the university received in FY24 validates this vision. It illustrates that our sponsors value the creativity and relevance of our faculty's work, from the building blocks of basic research to translational research that yields proactive and innovative solutions to society's greatest challenges."
External funding supports initiatives across campus, including research projects, academic support, scholarships and facility improvements. The funding can include contracts, awards and cooperative agreements from federal, state and local governments, as well as from individuals, corporations, nonprofits and other universities. While external funding supports research operating expenses, it does not support operating expenses related to the university's educational mission.
Tornadoes, agrivoltaics, renewable natural gas and microgrids
Here are a four examples of Iowa State research projects that received external support during fiscal year 2024:
- Partha Sarkar, a professor of aerospace engineering, will lead a national team that's designing and planning a center that will study windstorms and their effects on buildings and infrastructure. The goal is to engineer improvements that reduce structural damage. The National Science Foundation is supporting the effort with a four-year, $14 million grant.
- Ajay Nair, professor and chair of horticulture, is leading a multidisciplinary study of agrivoltaics, that's using solar farms to harvest energy and crops. Researchers are raising bees and growing vegetables, fruits and pollinator habitat within the 10-acre Alliant Energy Solar Farm at Iowa State University. The U.S. Department of Energy is supporting the project with a four-year, $1.8 million grant.
- Lisa Schulte Moore – a professor of natural resource ecology and management, a co-director of Iowa State's Bioeconomy Institute and a 2021 MacArthur Fellow – is the Iowa State leader of a project encouraging more farmers to plant cover crops and perennial prairie grass. A potential incentive is demonstrating how harvested winter-hearty crops and grass can be processed into renewable natural gas. Roeslein Alternative Energy, an industry partner based in St. Louis, is supporting Iowa State's studies with an award of nearly $10.6 million.
- Manimaran Govindarasu, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering and the Murray J. and Ruth M. Harpole Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is leading the work to create a new cybersecurity center based at Iowa State that will protect wind and solar farms and local microgrids from cyberattacks. The U.S. Department of Energy is supporting the project with a two-year, $2.5 million grant.
