UH sets
funding record

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

The University of Hawaii set a new record of $164 million in research funding and other funding for the 1999 fiscal year.

That's up from $160 million the previous year.

The funding includes research and training grants and contracts from federal and international sources, state agencies, other education institutions and private foundations.

The research portion reached $93 million, setting records for three straight years. The figure represents a 20 percent increase from three years ago.

Last year, the Chronicle of Higher Education ranked UH 64th in the nation in securing federal research dollars during the 1997 fiscal year. Alan Teramura, UH senior vice president for research and dean of graduate studies, said he expected UH to rank higher this year.

"These numbers indicate that our faculty is vigorous in pursuit of federal and state dollars and is doing extremely well competing with our peers nationally," Teramura said in a UH press release.

A Chronicle survey out this week found UH received the most special funding from Congress in the past five years out of about 250 schools that compete for research money: $71.9 million in specially earmarked funds and $137.2 million in shared funds. But this year UH's share was $3.5 million, not enough for the top 25 schools.

The university received 14 grants of more than a quarter million dollars during June. They included: Hawaii Family Registry of Colon Cancer from the National Cancer Institute for $536,628; High-Performance Adaptive Optics Imager for Astronomy from the National Science Foundation for $454,947; improvement of bottomfish stocks in Hawaiian islands from the Department of Land and Natural Resources for $437,500; Hawaii Minority Based CCOP from the National Cancer Institute for $403,555; and Upward Bound Program from the U.S. Department of Education for $350,465.