UMN Research Statistics

Annual Report on Research & Technology Commercialization

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) tracks key research metrics for the University, including national rankings, proposals and awards, sponsored expenditures, and technology commercialization performance measures. Each year, OVPR presents an annual report on UMN research and technology commercialization.

• See the FY2019 Annual Report on Research and Technology Commercialization for story highlights among our research projects, links to information sources, and current statistics on research awards, expenditures, and tech transfer.
• See the press release on the FY2019 Annual Report: University of Minnesota reaches record levels of research funding, expenditures.
• Faculty and staff seeking detailed data, including college level statistics from previous years, can access the OVPR Research Reporting Center.

National Rankings

The UMN consistently ranks among the nation’s top 10 public research universities according to several well-regarded research university assessments, including the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (HERD), the Center for Measuring University Performance (CMUP), and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

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Dollar amounts represented in thousands - Source: National Science Foundation’s HERD Survey

Expenditures

The HERD survey is the primary source of comparative information on research expenditures at US colleges and universities.

The University’s Twin Cities campus posted $955 million in research expenditures in FY2019, the latest available figures. (The HERD survey requires the University to report Twin Cities alone.) When all UMN campuses’ expenditures were combined, the total was $982 million.
 

Proposals & Awards

University of Minnesota faculty and staff competed successfully for a record $863 million in externally sponsored research awards in FY2019, up 8.8 percent from FY2018 and the highest amount received any year to date.
 

Awards by Source, FY2013-2019

^{Dollar amounts represented in millions.}

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Federal awards rose by $43 million (8.8 percent) and accounted for 62 percent of overall awards, and the University’s largest source of federal funding, the National Institutes of Health, rose by $47 million (17.8 percent). Agencies in the Federal: Other category include defense ($32.1 million), agriculture ($31.3 million), other Department of Health and Human Services agencies ($30.8 million), energy ($17.7 million), and education ($15.1 million). Nonfederal sources comprised $325 million, up $26 million or 8.9 percent.
 

Awards by Source, FY2019

^{Dollar amounts represented in millions.}

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Overall, 55 percent of all fiscal 2019 research awards were to the Medical School or other health sciences, underscoring the University’s broad strength across many biomedical and health disciplines. The Other Health Sciences pie slice represents the Office of Academic and Clinical Affairs ($67.7 million), the School of Public Health ($65.6 million), and Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Veterinary Medicine ($63.8 million).
 

Awards by Recipient, FY2019

^{Dollar amounts represented in millions.}

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Technology Commercialization

University-developed technologies reach the market through University of Minnesota Technology Commercialization, which facilitates the transfer of University research to licensee companies for the development of new products and services that benefit the public good, foster economic growth, and generate revenue to support the University’s mission.

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Dollar amounts represented in millions
Technology Commercialization, Wellspring Sophia; UMN Enterprise Financial System
*New Patent Filing Rate is the number of new patents filed during the fiscal year divided by the number of new disclosures in the same time period

 
The UMN holds more than 900 issued patents and 1,800 current licenses and has more than 100 MN-IP research agreements in place.

FY2019 numbers showed growth in key technology transfer categories, including gross revenues, the number of University of Minnesota startups, and, under MN-IP, the number of research agreements, the number of companies having research agreements, and the level of sponsored research commitments. Other categories remained steady or showed only a slight decline (less than 3%), including new licenses, current revenue generating agreements, invention disclosures, patent filing rate, and issued patents.

Eight startup companies have been acquired or gone public 2017-2019 (five in FY2019), underscoring the value of UMN technologies.
 

UMN Companies acquired or IPO’d, 2017-2019

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See the Annual Report on Technology Commercialization for more highlights on how the University supports the entrepreneurial ecosystem.