In November, Rep. Morgan Griffith traveled to the other side of the world — Baku, Azerbaijan — to deliver a message to the United Nations climate conference: Research being conducted at Virginia Tech can save the planet.
Granted, the Salem Republican who represents Virginia’s 9th District in Southwest Virginia didn’t express it quite that way, but that’s essentially what he meant. He touted work being done at Virginia Tech to capture carbon being emitted from fossil fuels. His point was that we shouldn’t have to retire fossil fuels if there’s technology that would strip the carbon from them.
Environmental activists pushed back on that point, but this point is undebatable: Research being done at Virginia Tech is now being talked about on the world stage.
That’s been true in scientific circles for a long time, but Griffith’s plug for Virginia Tech at a U.N. event that drew more than 56,000 people and leaders from nearly 200 countries represented a new high point for the Blacksburg university, even if not all of them were in the room at the time Griffith spoke.
So does a new report by the National Science Foundation on research funding at universities across the United States. Here are key parts for us:
- Overall research spending at Virginia Tech now approaches $600 million, which is about the same size as the annual budget for the city of Hampton. The specific amount for the year 2023 is $598,113,000, up slightly from $591,816,000 the year before. Despite that increase in actual research dollars, Virginia Tech slipped in the national rankings from 53rd to 57th nationally. At the risk of sounding like an apologist, that decline in the rankings doesn’t seem nearly as important as the actual increase in spending. Academic types might compare rankings the way sports fans pay attention to football or basketball rankings, but those other schools aren’t here, so I’m not sure it matters that much who ranks where. What matters to us are the dollars actually being spent here. If some other school somewhere can get more, good for them. (Of note: That $598 million figure is the total amount of research spending at Virginia Tech. Of that, $418.5 million is “externally-sponsored, with the difference being what Tech pays for. The school’s goal is to hit $600 million in externally sponsored research by 2029; Tech hit the previous goal of $415 million by 2025 two years early)
- The more interesting stats may be how the nature of Tech’s research is changing. A decade ago, 59.9% of all university research nationally was federally funded, but Virginia Tech lagged behind. In 2013, 40.6% of its research was federally funded. Now that gap is closing. The latest report finds that 47.1% of Tech’s funding is federally funded, within sight of the national average of 54.8%.
- The past year has seen a particularly big change in Tech’s research funding. Virginia Tech was the only one of Virginia’s five R1 universities — the top category for research universities — which rose in the rankings for federally funded research, from 67 to 62. In all, Virginia Tech accounted for nearly half (47%) of the collective growth in federally funded research among Virginia’s R1 schools (which also include the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University and Old Dominion University).
- Within the category of federally funded research, the biggest rise came in the category of Defense Department-related research, the single biggest type of sponsored research at Tech. In the defense niche, Tech rose from 26 to 20 in the nation. I saw some of that in action last month, or rather didn’t see some of it in action. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., paid a visit to Tech’s National Security Institute to present an award from the Defense Department. That presentation was open to the news media. Afterward, Warner — the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — was escorted into another room for a classified briefing. That part was not. In terms of grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, Virginia Tech saw the second-biggest growth of any university in the country. Credit that to the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.
I could regale you with more numbers, but the main point is that Virginia Tech is seeing a big increase in federally funded research at rates that surpass national figures. Just a few more numbers: - Since 2022, federally funded research is up 9.0% nationally; at Tech, it’s up 17.4%.
- Since 2020, federally funded research is up 29.2% nationally; at Tech it’s up 33.8%.
That 2020 date coincides with Daniel Sui’s appointment as Tech’s senior vice president for research and innovation. Sui came to Virginia Tech after leading research programs at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. The following year he reorganized Tech’s research programs around four main fields, termed “research frontiers.” Those four: artificial intelligence, health, security and quantum.
“We have been very strategic in our recent investments,” Sui said. “We have been very strategic in terms of hiring new faculty. We have also been making very strategic investments in research infrastructure and in research facilities to support the new research talents.”
So why does any of this matter if you’re not at Virginia Tech?
“For the general public, in terms of research talent, they really are trying to improve people’s lives,” Sui said. Some research may produce quick results, others may not. “When you’re doing lots of research, you may not see immediate benefits,” he said, “but it may be a big deal 10 to 20 years from now.”
Some of that health research is aimed at addressing disparities in health outcomes between rural and urban residents, he pointed out. Other research is aimed at finding alternative energy sources — the research Griffith cited at the U.N. conference would fall under the energy category.
A casual review of Tech’s research turns up everything from an Agriculture Department grant to combat the barley yellow dwarf virus that can ruin a crop of winter wheat to a National Institutes of Health grant to examine the biology of an enzyme that’s found in 15% of cancers. One Defense Department award goes to researchers at the Virginia Tech-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine to try to develop medicines that might combat hemorrhagic fever viruses. How is that a defense matter? Those viruses are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, which is seeing the highest population growth in the world. That population growth, in a poor part of the world, makes Africa a suspect for political instability in the years ahead. A plague that could cause people to flee one country for another might set off a domino effect of unintended effects that could spiral into security issues. It’s no accident that the grant comes through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Another Defense Department grant deals with how climate change may affect population mobility in the Indo-Pacific region. In other words, will rising sea waters force people to move, and will those migrations cause political instability? Bigger guns can prevent some wars; others can be prevented by dealing with the conditions that cause them.
Of course, there are also more traditional Defense Department grants, such as the one for research into “the next generation of energetic materials,” which a news release says “include propellants, explosives, fuels, pyrotechnics, and reactive materials that are used in rocket motors, warheads, and munitions. Applying new techniques and processes used in additive manufacturing, researchers aim to create safe and smart energetic materials, with improved performance.”
The implications of all those seem obvious. Here may be the real reason that all this matters: We’re talking about the long-term evolution of the New River Valley and Roanoke Valley. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the academic-turned-politician, was once asked how to build a great city. His answer: “Create a great university and wait 200 years.”
He wasn’t wrong. Many have observed how universities are essentially modern-day industrial parks. A report last year by the Brookings Institution wrote that “most strong regional economies have a leading research university.” Here’s the particularly relevant part for us: “Regions that became home to a land grant university over a century ago have stronger economies today as a result.” More specifically, research often leads to spin-off businesses. “For each new university patent,” Brookings wrote, “researchers estimate 15 additional jobs are created outside the university in the local economy.”
A study by Michigan Technological University found that, in a rural area, every $1 million of university research translated into 10 jobs and $159,000 of tax revenue. Using that scale, Virginia Tech’s research works out to 5,980 jobs. That would make research a bigger employer than the Volvo Trucks plant in Pulaski County. Not all that research is in the Roanoke and New River valleys, but enough is to matter.
By that measure, research spending at Virginia Tech — be it federally funded or otherwise — is a vital statistic for the region’s economic health. There is, however, a potential threat to that federally funded research: the incoming Trump administration, which wants to reduce federal spending. Inside Higher Education recently looked at what Donald Trump’s plan for federally funded research might be. In his first term, “Trump … tried repeatedly to cut federal research spending,” Inside Higher Education reported. Congress blocked those proposed cuts, though, and could do so again. The publication wrote: “Brian Darmody, chief strategy officer for the Association of University Research Parks, suspects the incoming Republican-controlled Congress will also recognize that taking a sledgehammer to research may not go over so well in the communities they represent, including many that depend on university research endeavors to drive the local economy and, in some cases, create manufacturing jobs.”
Or, in the case of some of Tech’s energy research, find new uses for coal.
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