30 Nov UW–Madison remains 8th in research ranking, surpasses $1.5 billion in research expenditures

By Natasha Kassulke, UW News

The University of Wisconsin–Madison, for the first time, has topped $1.5 billion in research expenditures, according to the National Science Foundation. With this accomplishment, UW–Madison is ranked 8th among the nearly 900 public and private universities surveyed by NSF.   

The NSF today released its Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) data showing a 10% increase in research expenditures at UW–Madison over the previous fiscal year, or more than $143 million for the period covering July 2021 and the end of June 2022. UW–Madison reported more than $1.52 billion in total research expenditures, about half of which comes from federal awards.    

“I’m glad to see that we remain ranked among the top 10 research institutions, according to this important measure. UW–Madison is among the relatively few elite institutions in the U.S. that have more than $1 billion in annual research expenditures,” says UW–Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin. “Importantly, we also celebrate the fact that we increased our expenditures by more than $140 million in fiscal year 2022 and that our researchers are addressing society’s grandest challenges in their work.”  

The HERD survey is the primary source of research expenditure data at American universities and colleges but is just one way to measure academic research activity. Each year, it collects information on expenditures by research field and funding sources from among institutions that spend at least $150,000 on separately budgeted research and development in a fiscal year. Read more…