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Record-high research at KU benefits Kansans, fuels state economy
LAWRENCE — Research and development expenditures spanning all University of Kansas campuses increased to $546.1 million in fiscal year 2024, surpassing the half-billion-dollar mark for the first time in university history. Last year alone, research expenditures at KU supported the salaries of 5,595 people. Additionally, the university spent $86.5 million in 91 Kansas counties on research-related goods and services in fiscal year 2024, according to a report from the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science.
KU, Kansas State faculty receive Higuchi-KU Endowment research achievement awards
LAWRENCE — Four faculty members at two Kansas universities were named recipients of the Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards, the state higher education system’s most prestigious recognition for scholarly excellence. The honorees are Johann (Hans) Coetzee and Walter Dodds, both from Kansas State University, and Hartmut Jaeschke and Dave Tell, both from the University of Kansas. Recipients will be recognized at a ceremony this spring.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Mindie Paget, Office of Research, 785-864-0013, mpaget@ku.edu, @ResearchAtKU
Record-high research at KU benefits Kansans, fuels state economy
LAWRENCE — Research and development expenditures spanning all University of Kansas campuses increased to $546.1 million in fiscal year 2024, surpassing the half-billion-dollar mark for the first time in university history. This record high represents a 17% increase year over year and the ninth consecutive year of research growth for the university.
The reverberations of that growth extend far beyond KU to benefit people throughout the Sunflower State and beyond.
“As one of America’s leading research universities, KU is solving major problems facing Kansans and their communities while simultaneously serving as a vital economic engine for the state,” said Matthias Salathe, KU’s chief research officer.
“Our researchers are driven to improve human health and well-being, sustain life on our planet, enhance safety and security, and so much more,” said Shelley Hooks, vice chancellor for research on KU’s Lawrence campus. “In the process, they are also educating tomorrow’s workforce, creating jobs, launching and attracting businesses, attracting external funding to the state, and investing in the prosperity of Kansans.”
Last year alone, research expenditures at KU supported the salaries of 5,595 people. Additionally, the university spent $86.5 million in 91 Kansas counties on research-related goods and services in fiscal year 2024, according to a report from the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science. Vendors in 19 of those counties received more than $102,000 in purchases.
Among research funded during fiscal year 2024 were projects to develop treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease; improve natural disaster resistance of housing; promote healthy brain aging among midlife adults; integrate in-farm solar arrays to diversify farmers’ income; prevent diabetes in rural communities; optimize missile-defense radars; build capacity to produce highly qualified STEM teachers; evaluate community supports for youth with disabilities and more.
Research expenditures are dollars spent to conduct research. A majority of KU’s externally funded research — nearly 70% in 2024 — is supported by federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. KU researchers win grant dollars from these agencies through competitions designed to identify the most innovative ideas for addressing societal challenges. Other sources of KU research funding include state and local governments, private businesses and nonprofit foundations.
Advancing health, economic impact
Additional IRIS reporting shows that KU research contributed $1.34 billion to the U.S. economy between 2011 and 2023, with spending flowing to more than 7,700 vendors and subcontractors over that time. Of the 59% of KU’s spending that could be matched with specific vendors and contractors, more than 990 were small businesses.
The IRIS reports encompass research spending across all KU campuses. That includes the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, where research ultimately contributes to life-changing medical advances.
“We continue to see significant growth in research at KU Medical Center in the quantity and quality of projects being funded,” Salathe said. “Our scientists and researchers are seeking new treatments and health-related approaches to some of our most critical health issues, including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”
In addition to nearly $10 million in annual support for the KU Cancer Center, KU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and Frontiers Clinical & Translational Science Institute, KU Medical Center received a $6.3 million annually renewable award to launch the Heartland Consortium as part of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program to advance precision medicine. The university also received a grant renewal for the Kansas Institute for Precision Medicine, which totals $11.4 million over five years.
KU’s research-related economic impact extends beyond the data captured in IRIS reporting. For example, 54 active startup companies have spun out of KU or are based on KU technologies, and more than half of those companies are located in Kansas. Through the university’s relationship with KU Innovation Park, KU researchers help attract businesses to Lawrence, Kansas City and the surrounding area — companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Garmin — that want to be close to KU researchers and students. The park system, which extends to the medical center campus, includes 74 companies and accounts for 750 private sector jobs and $49.8 million in annual direct payroll.
Influencing rankings, AAU membership
KU’s substantial research activity has helped sustain its membership in the Association of American Universities since 1909, and the university’s annual research expenditures affect its standing in the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education & Research Development Survey. KU ranked 47th among public universities for research and development expenditures and 53rd among public universities for federally funded R&D in the latest HERD survey, which is based on fiscal year 2023 data.
The university also claimed the second overall spot in federally financed R&D expenditures in non-science and engineering fields and ranked No. 3 among public universities for overall R&D in non-science and engineering fields.
KU ranked in the top 50 among publics in overall R&D in the following fields and subfields:
No. 1 in Education
No. 3 in Non-Science & Engineering Fields
No. 3 in Social Work
No. 18 in Geological & Earth Sciences
No. 18 in Life Sciences, not elsewhere classified
No. 25 in Sciences, not elsewhere classified
No. 27 in Chemical Engineering
No. 30 in Health Sciences
No. 36 in Chemistry
No. 36 in Psychology
No. 38 in Anthropology
No. 41 in Atmospheric Science & Meteorology
No. 42 in Communication & Communications Technologies
No. 43 in Aerospace, Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering
No. 46 in Life Sciences
No. 50 in Astronomy & Astrophysics
KU ranked in the top 50 among publics in federally funded R&D in the following fields and subfields:
No. 1 in Social Work
No. 2 in Non-Science & Engineering Fields
No. 4 in Education
No. 9 in Visual & Performing Arts
No. 12 in Humanities
No. 16 in Communication & Communication Technologies
No. 21 in Anthropology
No. 30 in Geological & Earth Sciences
No. 30 in Chemistry
No. 30 in Health Sciences
No. 36 in Psychology
No. 38 in Chemical Engineering
No. 40 in Aerospace, Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering
No. 41 in Atmospheric Science & Meteorology
No. 43 in Natural Resources & Conservation
No. 45 in Astronomy & Astrophysics
No. 47 in Civil Engineering
No. 49 in Life Sciences
KU’s fiscal year 2024 research expenditures will be used to determine the university’s 2025 ranking in the NSF HERD survey.
IRIS is a national consortium of research universities using data to understand, explain and improve higher education and research. IRIS reports are based on administrative data that KU supplies to IRIS, which are then merged with other public and private datasets.
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Contact: Vince Munoz, Office of Research, 785-864-2254, vince.munoz@ku.edu, @ResearchAtKU
KU, Kansas State faculty receive Higuchi-KU Endowment research achievement awards
LAWRENCE — Four faculty members at two Kansas universities were named recipients of the Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards, the state higher education system’s most prestigious recognition for scholarly excellence.
The annual awards are given in four categories of scholarly and creative achievement. This year’s honorees:
Dave Tell, professor of communication studies and co-director of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, KU, recipient of the Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities & Social Sciences.
Walter Dodds, University Distinguished Professor and Edwin G. & Lillian J. Brychta Chair of Biology, Kansas State University, recipient of the Olin Petefish Award in Basic Sciences.
Johann (Hans) Coetzee, University Distinguished Professor of anatomy & physiology and interim vice president for research, Kansas State University, recipient of the Irvin Youngberg Award in Applied Sciences.
Hartmut Jaeschke, University Distinguished Professor of pharmacology, toxicology & therapeutics, KU Medical Center, recipient of the Dolph Simons Award in Biomedical Sciences.
The four will be recognized at a ceremony this spring along with recipients of other major KU research awards.
This is the 43rd annual presentation of the Higuchi awards, established in 1981 by Takeru Higuchi, a distinguished professor at the University of Kansas from 1967 to 1983, his wife, Aya, and the KU Endowment Association. The awards recognize exceptional long-term research accomplishments by faculty at Kansas Board of Regents universities. Each honoree receives $10,000 for their ongoing research.
The awards are named for former leaders of KU Endowment who helped recruit Higuchi to KU.
Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities & Social Sciences
Dave Tell is a professor of communication studies and co-director of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities. His scholarship focuses on one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history.
Tell is the author of “Remembering Emmett Till,” a book that lays out the history of efforts to memorialize Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was killed for whistling at a white woman in a rural Mississippi store. Till’s mother, Mamie, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago, which sparked a national conversation around lynching and catalyzed the American Civil Rights Movement. Efforts to remember Till’s life and murder have been met with opposition. Signs commemorating the murder have been stolen and shot multiple times and defaced with acid. In 2019, a group of college students posted a photo of themselves carrying guns next to the sign.
In response to the vandalism, Tell wrote a New York Times editorial calling for the vandalized Till signs to be placed in a museum. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History responded, creating an exhibit based largely on Tell’s research.
Tell has partnered with the family of Emmett Till to launch the Emmett Till Memory Project, a website and mobile app that lets users visit relevant sites, access archival documents and learn civil rights history on a 21st century digital platform. Tell’s work has been recognized in multiple international publications, and he attended the White House event launching the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Park.
Tell received a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, and a doctorate in communication arts and sciences from Pennsylvania State University.
Olin Petefish Award in Basic Sciences
Walter Dodds is a University Distinguished Professor and Edwin G. & Lillian J. Brychta Chair of Biology at Kansas State University. He evaluates how nutrients flow through freshwater ecosystems, including nutrient pollution, nuisance algal growth and water quality.
Dodds was the lead organizer behind the Stream Experimental and Observational Network, a group of aquatic scientists from across North America who proposed a continent-scale network of sensors that collects data of rivers and streams. This group shaped the design of the National Ecological Observatory Network, which among other things now includes 20 sites that will monitor freshwater sources in the United States for a planned 30 years. The data collected so far has already resulted in hundreds of scientific publications.
This work is both local and global. Dodds’ efforts assess the water quality and biogeochemistry of Kansas freshwater ecosystems, using the pristine Konza Prairie as a baseline. Better understanding these ecosystems can shed light on the effectiveness of conservation efforts essential to protecting the planet. Dodds is recognized among the top 2% of researchers worldwide, according to an analysis by Stanford University.
Dodds received a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Denver and a doctorate in biology from the University of Oregon.
Irvin Youngberg Award in Applied Sciences
Hans Coetzee is a University Distinguished Professor of anatomy & physiology and interim vice president for research at Kansas State University. His research involves the study and mitigation of pain in livestock.
Coetzee grew up around animals on his family’s dairy farm in South Africa. There he noticed that there were no standards for minimizing pain and discomfort in farm animals. While some livestock producers in America use human pain medicine off-label for animals, approval for livestock-specific drugs requires ways of assessing their effectiveness. This is especially challenging since many farm animals evolved to conceal signs of pain to evade predation. Coetzee and his team employed innovative methods — such as pressure mats to assess if animals are limping and thermography to measure skin temperature variations linked to pain-related changes in blood flow — to standardize pain detection.
These tests led to the approval of the first livestock analgesic drug (pain medication) that improved the welfare of millions of animals. Coetzee holds two U.S. patents and is recognized in the top 2% of researchers in his field worldwide by a Stanford University analysis of publications. In recognition of his research contributions, he was recently named the 2025 recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences.
Coetzee received a bachelor’s degree in veterinary science (DVM equivalent) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and a doctorate in veterinary microbiology from Iowa State University.
Dolph Simons Award in Biomedical Sciences
Hartmut Jaeschke is a University Distinguished Professor of pharmacology, toxicology & therapeutics at KU Medical Center. He studies drug-induced liver disease from one of the most commonly used medications.
Acetaminophen is an important over-the-counter medication that provides pain relief to millions of people, but when taken excessively it can cause liver damage. Jaeschke and his research group look at liver cells to assess treatment options. His work helped identify fomepizole, an existing drug, as a new antidote against acetaminophen toxicity. Jaeschke is working on repurposing other drugs for the same purpose.
For some patients, the damage done from acetaminophen requires a liver transplant. Jaeschke and his team have discovered a biomarker that could help clinicians more quickly determine when a liver transplant is needed. With the patent now granted, Jaeschke’s work can go from bench to bedside to help save lives.
Jaeschke received a master’s degree in biochemistry and a doctorate degree in toxicology, both from the University of Tübingen, Germany.
About KU Endowment
KU Endowment is the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment was the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.
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Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, ebp@ku.edu
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