Georgia State Sets Research Funding Record with More Than $150 Million In Awards

ATLANTA—Georgia State University faculty set an institutional record, earning $150.2 million in research funding in fiscal year 2020.

The record surpasses the previous high of $147 million set in fiscal year 2017 and is $22 million higher than the previous year’s total. This is the sixth consecutive year research awards have topped $100 million, and the first year awards have exceeded $150 million.

Of the $150.2 million, $56.5 million came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), $17.8 from the National Science Foundation (NSF), $11.2 million from the Georgia Department of Health and Human Services, and $9.3 million from the U.S. Department of Education. Taken together, NIH and NSF awards nearly doubled from last year's total of $37.7 million.

Among the university’s top 20 grant recipients, 12 are women. Thirty-three investigators brought in more than $1 million each. The College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Public Health and the College of Education and Human Development each set college funding records.

“Georgia State is one of the fastest growing research institutions in the country, and this record-breaking year is a testament to our faculty’s innovative work across all disciplines and departments,” said Michael P. Eriksen, interim vice president for research and economic development.

Some of the year’s key awards:

• A $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to Gwendolyn Benson, associate dean in the College of Education and Human Development, to expand the college’s teacher residency programs to rural districts in Georgia.
• A five-year, $5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to Jessica Turner, professor of psychology and neuroscience, to study how symptoms associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression relate to changes in the brain using large-scale imaging analysis.
• A five-year, $3.3 million award from the National Institute on Aging to Vince Calhoun, Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and director of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science, to use advanced machine learning to identify and separate subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease.
• A four-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Center for Special Education Research to David Houchins, professor in the College of Education & Human Development, to study a blended learning literacy program in juvenile justice schools.
• A five-year, $2.65 million grant from the Department of Health and Human to Dan Whitaker, Distinguished University Professor at the School of Public Health, to coordinate a regional partnership to help parents with addiction issues improve their lives and the lives of their children.
• A five-year, $1.95 million award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to Leszek Ignatowicz, professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences, to study what causes autoimmunity in the human body.
• A $600,000 grant from the NIH to Jenny Yang, Regents’ Professor of Chemistry, to bring a 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging machine to Georgia State.

Georgia State is one of only 115 public and private universities in the Carnegie Foundation’s elite category of R1: Highest Research Activity. For the past three years, the university has been the highest-ranked institution without an engineering, medical or agricultural school in the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey, a nationally recognized barometer of university research activity.