The University of Alberta made strong gains in annual revenue dedicated to research — bucking a national decline in funding, according to the latest ranking of Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities.
The combined research income of the 50 universities on the list dropped by 2.6 per cent in the 2021-22 fiscal year, to just over $9 billion — only the second overall decline since 2014, according to Research Infosource.
Despite this drop in overall funding, research funding at the U of A jumped by 7.8 per cent, or $43.3 million, to an all-time high of $597.4 million. It was the largest total gain among Canada’s top-tier medical research universities and the highest percentage gain among the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities.
“The University of Alberta continues to be one of Canada’s top-performing post-secondary institutions and a research powerhouse. Notwithstanding an overall challenging environment for research funding, it is great to see that the U of A’s research revenue continues to grow at such an impressive rate, reflecting the depth and breadth of our research excellence,” says U of A president Bill Flanagan.
Flanagan points to the Striving for Pandemic Preparedness Alberta Research Consortium, which received $55.1 million from the provincial government to create a made-in-Alberta vaccine and drug development pipeline, along with funding for research into COVID-19 and its consequences by experts across the health sciences, natural and applied sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
Other highlights included federal funding through the New Frontiers in Research Fund for The Ărramăt Project, a six-year global collaboration examining links between biodiversity loss and Indigenous health, and infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support cutting-edge research projects. The university also saw significant growth in funding from Mitacs, as well as increased funding through Results Driven Agriculture Research for numerous U of A projects.
“Our new 10-year strategic plan, Shape, outlines an ambitious plan to grow our research capacity and impact to become one of Canada’s top three research-intensive universities. These results, particularly our impressive growth rate in funding, show that this goal is within our grasp,” says Flanagan.
The rise in research income also signals progress toward a key indicator in Forward with Purpose, the U of A’s strategic plan for research and innovation, which calls for increasing annual sponsored research revenue to $650 million by 2028 and $750 million by 2033, notes Aminah Robinson Fayek, U of A vice-president of research and innovation.
“The U of A is poised to further our trajectory as one of the world’s top research universities — and this latest ranking is just another demonstration of the excellence of our researchers and innovators. With the recent launch of Forward with Purpose, we’re going to continue to put people at the centre of our efforts,” she says.
Robinson Fayek points out that the U of A ranked first in the medical university tier in terms of graduate student research intensity, a measure of total research dollars divided by the number of graduate students at each university, with $71,300 per graduate student.
“This means our graduate students have more opportunities to pursue research and collaborate with colleagues across a wide variety of disciplines,” she says.
The U of A held steady from last year with the fifth highest research funding income in the country, behind the University of Toronto ($1.3 billion), University of British Columbia ($737.1 million), McGill University ($699.2 million) and Université de Montréal ($660 million).