UIC broadens research portfolio with gains in education, engineering 

The University of Illinois Chicago received $485.5 million in research funding during the 2024 fiscal year, led by significant gains in the College of Engineering and College of Education. Awards from federal, state and private sources sponsored nearly 3,400 projects on research topics ranging from maternal health, Latino humanities and the environmental drivers of disease to sustainable aviation fuels, electric grids for renewable energy and quantum science education. 

The 2024 total reflects a 26% increase in UIC research funding since fiscal year 2019, at an annual compound growth rate of 5%. The latest fiscal year set a new high for research expenditures — the university’s spending on research based on past funding — at $452.8 million, an 8.5% increase over the previous year. 

The first quarter of fiscal year 2025, which closed in September, was the university’s best ever, with $195.6 million in awards. 

“UIC continues to succeed in our joint pursuit of access and excellence. Our faculty are competing their ideas nationally and internationally — and winning. What makes our research portfolio so special is the reflected deep commitment to local and global impact,” Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda said. “This vibrant research community also offers our students abundant opportunities to engage in research of all types, advancing their careers while making a meaningful difference in the world.” 

The UIC colleges that saw the largest jumps in research funding for fiscal year 2024, which ran from July 2023 to June 2024, were the College of Education, which increased its funding by 42%, and the College of Engineering, which saw a 13% increase over fiscal year 2023.  

The College of Medicine led all UIC colleges, with $196.5 million in total funding. It was followed by the College of Engineering ($50.5 million), the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences ($39.4 million), the School of Public Health ($32.9 million), the College of Applied Health Sciences ($22.5 million) and the Retzky College of Pharmacy ($21.1 million). 

UIC received 75% of its research funding from federal sponsors, led by $205.4 million from the National Institutes of Health. The National Science Foundation awarded UIC $35.3 million — a 10.5% increase over fiscal year 2023. U.S Department of Energy funding also increased by 7.6% to $16.7 million. 

“UIC continues to lead in health sciences research while also expanding our initiatives in engineering, physical sciences and the humanities,” Vice Chancellor for Research Joanna Groden said. “These broad research strengths position UIC to conduct the interdisciplinary, collaborative explorations needed to address today’s pressing scientific and societal challenges.” 

Other top government sponsors included the U.S. Department of Defense ($13.2 million) and the State of Illinois ($45.8 million). Private sponsors, such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, awarded $66.3 million to UIC for research.   

UIC projects that earned large awards in fiscal year 2024 included: 

• The new Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence, funded by an $11 million, six-year grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 

• Research on new fuels for sustainable aviation and autonomous vehicles, funded by a $6 million collaborative agreement with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. 

• The Crossing Latinidades initiative supporting faculty and student proposals on Latino history, art and literature, renewed with a $5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

• A UIC-led consortium creating educational curricula to bring underrepresented populations into quantum science careers, funded by $4.8 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. 

• One of six sites for the NIH Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium, an initiative to transform genetic, environmental and clinical data into opportunities to diagnose, treat and prevent complex diseases. 

• The design of next-generation power grids that integrate renewable energy from solar, wind and battery storage, funded by $4.1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Individual faculty members receiving the most research funding in 2024 included Dr. Martha Daviglus (Medicine), Dr. Rachel Caskey (Medicine), Dr. Jerry Krishnan (Medicine), Maria de los Angeles Torres (Liberal Arts and Sciences), Catherine Main (Education), Robin Mermelstein (Liberal Arts and Sciences), Cheryl Schraeder (Nursing), Kenneth Brezinsky (Engineering), Andrea Vaughan (Education) and Creasie Finney Hairston (Social Work).  

Five UIC researchers also received National Science Foundation CAREER awards, a prestigious grant for early career development: Osama Khalil, Nicole Looper and Marcus Michelen from the department of mathematics, statistics and computer science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Myunghee Kim and Zhangli Peng, from the College of Engineering. 

In addition to the $485.5 million in research funding, the UIC Office of Technology Management reported $24.5 million in revenue from 343 active licenses of its intellectual property in the 2024 fiscal year.