I was the guest of Tom Rosol, interim Vice President for Research at OSU, at the OSU-Purdue game last year. I was interested to read his summary of research support activities at OSU for this year, presented to the OSU Board of Trustees. OSU accounts for 40% of university R&D spending in Ohio; the other 40% is equally split between Cincinnati and Case.
Some things that I found interesting:
- Funding from federal sources is much greater than from non-federal resources. NIH is much the largest extramural funder of OSU research. Ohio’s ‘third frontier program’ is having some impact and now accounts for more of research spending than does NSF support.
- He argues that research spending is a good indicator of productivity in all subjects except in the arts and humanities, where it is more difficult to ‘quantitate’ productivity.
- One of OSU’s strategic aims is to support more interdisciplinary and intercollege research activity and they are seeding development there.
- 22% of research at OSU involves laboratory animals.
- Since 2001, OSU faculty have formed about 6 start-up companies per annum.
One of the units he oversees is The Ohio State University :: Research Foundation where you can find a sense of the supported research environment in which faculty work.
