Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Evan Andrews [Click to enlarge]

When most people think of things Texas A&M University excels in they think of tradition, national championship golf and track teams, a great engineering program and business school and spirit.

Now they can also think of A&M as a top academic research performer. The National Science Foundation has named Texas A&M University as the only new member of the foundation's annual Top 20 Academic Research Performers in the United States.

Each year, the National Science Foundation surveys 690 U.S. institutions and ranks them according to research and development expenditures in science and engineering.

Dr. Jeffrey R. Seemann, vice president for research at A&M, said "it means that we have some of the best faculty in the world (nearly 3,000 of them) doing research that is vitally important in a whole variety of arenas. We are making gains all over the place, our environmental sciences program has shown enormous leaps and bounds, and engineering of course - we have one of the most spectacular sets of engineering programs in the country, in addition to our social sciences, agriculture, geo sciences and architecture arenas. We really have a lot to be proud of here."

The foundation is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare and to secure the national defense."

The federal government is the largest source of university research and development funding in science and engineering, and the foundation is no exception with an annual budget of about $6.06 billion. It funds about 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America's colleges and universities.

Texas A&M University replaced Washington University in St. Louis at the number 20 spot in Fiscal Year 2008 with expenditures totaling $582 million. Our school's rank is joined by other prestigious institutions such as John Hopkins University, Duke University, Stanford University, MIT and University of California at Berkeley but is the only Texas institution to rank in the foundation's Top 20 for 2009.

"By joining the NSF Top 20, Texas A&M takes a significant step toward its goal of ranking among the Top 10 research universities in the United States," Seemann said. "For A&M to continue moving up on the list we can't let off on all of the important things that we are doing. Texas is doing a lot investing in higher education, so we must continue to hire great faculty and continue to give them the resources that they need to do cutting-edge research. We need to find new ways to bring everyone together around big concerns and issues, to attract those next big expenditures. And we need to continue to invest in this University in order to advance ourselves in this competitive environment."

In addition to helping reach this goal, the University has opened the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, a $100 million facility that will enable researchers to make what could be world-changing discoveries. With more than 30 lab facilities, the new building located next to Simpson Drill Field will be available to world-class scientists who are striving to make a difference in critical issues through research.

Top 20 List
1. Johns Hopkins University
2. University of California, San Francisco
3. University of Wisconsin, Madison
4. University of Michigan
5. University of California, Los Angeles
6. University of California, San Diego
7. Duke University
8. University of Washington
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. Ohio State University
11. Pennsylvania State University
12. Stanford University
13. University of Minnesota
14. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
15. Cornell University
16. University of California, Davis
17. University of Pittsburgh
18. University of California, Berkeley
19. University of Florida
20. Texas A&M University

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