Fresno State’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs reports that the university was awarded more than $41 million in 246 grants during fiscal year ended June 30 – the highest grant income in nine years and second greatest ever at Fresno State.

“These figures are especially noteworthy in light of several years of belt-tightening by federal and state funding sources coupled and deep cuts to CSU funding,” said Dr. Thomas McClanahan, associate vice president of Research and Sponsored Programs.

The $41 million represents a 7 percent increase over 2010-11 and 13 percent above 2009-10.

McClanahan underscored the importance of external grants. “They provide essential support for current programs while simultaneously helping to launch new ones, to stimulate faculty research, provide student support, train teachers and help promote economic development in the region,” he said.

Most of the grants to Fresno State are for faculty research, student services and professional training.

Among the highlights:

  • Biology professor Hwan Youn’s $415,200 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his project, “Understanding a Family of Bacterial Transcription Factors,” which will develop experimental tools to systematically characterize unstudied E.Coli receptor proteins.
  • An NIH four-year, $415,200 project by biology professor Mamta Rawat to research MRSA, a serious source of life-threatening hospital infections and increasingly community-acquired infections, whose work will help determine a suitable target for the development of drugs to fight MRSA infections.
  • The ATLAS project led by physics professor Yongsheng Gao, whose team received a $511,000 core grant from the National Science Foundation’s Elementary Particle Physics program, which supplemented a $1 million grant received for the project in previous years. ATLAS is conducted at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and Fresno State is one of 40 American universities and seven national laboratories that have had a hand in designing, building and operating it.
  • A five-year, $556,000 from NASA to the Lyles College of Engineering’s Peter Kinman for the Deep Space Network Advanced Engineering Program, which provides system level and detailed analysis of next-generation technologies for the Deep Space program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
    • A five-year, $1.6 million grant to the Division of Student Affairs from the U.S. Department of Education for the Educational Opportunity Center, supporting outreach to 1,300 nontraditional aged adults each year in obtaining their high school diploma and GED.
    • A five-year, $1.5 million grant for the Educational Talent Search project, which provides essential mentoring and tutoring support to 200 high school students each year to encourage college enrollment.

The mission of Fresno State’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs is to advance university research and support the efforts of faculty, students and staff in fulfilling a wide range of goals. For more information, visit Office of Research & Sponsored Programs or call 559.278.0840.