Research Excellence
To achieve its institutional potential as one of the premier public research universities and make a profound impact on local and global communities, UB has built up infrastructure to support faculty in their investigations while leveraging disciplinary strengths to solve society's most pressing problems.
Identifying cross-disciplinary research and scholarly areas where existing strengths aligned with great societal need, UB developed a paradigm rooted in innovation in basic and applied research and fostered a culture of interdisciplinarity to tackle complex and urgent challenges facing health care, the climate and social justice, to name a few areas.
Research Excellence: Outcomes
As a result of its deliberate and strategic focus on research excellence, UB has achieved the following:
Research Expenditures
- R&D expenditures have risen from $353 million to $425 million annually
- This equates to a 20.4% increase over the last decade
Source: NSF Higher Education Research & Development Survey (NSF HERD)
Graph depicts annual research expenditures by academic year:
- 2010-2011: $353.2 million
- 2011-2012: $360.2 million
- 2012-2013: $387.9 million
- 2013-2014: $386.6 million
- 2014-2015: $382.9 million
- 2015-2016: $389.6 million
- 2016-2017: $401.6 million
- 2017-2018: $410.2 million
- 2018-2019: $413.8 million
- 2019-2020: $422 million
- 2020-2021: $425.3 million
National and International Recognition
- UB faculty are receiving national and international recognition with increasing frequency, including
- membership in the Academies
- NSF CAREER awards
- The total number of faculty awards have risen from 520 in 2011 to 913 in 2020
Source: Academic Analytics
Graph depicts how total faculty awards have risen each year:
- 2011: 520
- 2012: 531
- 2013: 604
- 2014: 630
- 2015: 670
- 2016: 712
- 2017: 764
- 2018: 822
- 2019: 849
- 2020:913
Faculty Citations
- A significant metric of disciplinary impact, scholarly citations have increased 83 percent since 2013.
Source: Academic Analytics
Graph depicts the number of faculty citations counted on a rolling basis as of September of each year listed:
- 2013: 97,652
- 2014: 111,902
- 2015: 122,363
- 2016: 136,990
- 2017: 154,473
- 2018: 146,830
- 2019: 164,618
- 2020: 173,347
- 2021: 178,529
Notation states that this is a 83% increase.
Grants
- UB was awarded several large-center grants, including:
- An NSF award to establish the AI Institute for Exceptional Education, a national insittute to develop artificial intelligence systems that identify and assist young children with speech and/or language processing challenges
- The Clinical and Translational Science Award and 2020 renewal
- An NSF Science and Technology Award to establish BioXFEL, a research consortium developing new X-ray techniques to analyze targets for drug discovery
- 4 extensions of the landmark Women's Health Initiative
SUNY Distinguished Ranks
- The number of UB faculty appointed to SUNY's distinguished ranks has risen dramatically, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all the active distinguished ranks in the entire SUNY system
- In the previous two decades, the number of faculty appointed to these ranks has more than doubled