UMass Chan’s $358M leads record-breaking research year systemwide

A view of UMass Chan Medical School from Plantation Street in Worcester.

Photo | Timothy Doyle UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester

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By Isabel Tehan

UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester had $358 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal 2022, leading the record-breaking $813-million year throughout the entire UMass system. This total marked an 8% increase in the system-wide research enterprise.

The R&D expenditures at UMass Chan increased by 3% from fiscal 2021, after a nearly 25% increase in expenditure between 2020 and 2021, according to the 2022 UMass Research and Expenditures Report released on Wednesday.

UMass Amherst had the second-highest expenditure in research across the five campus system, at $245 million for fiscal 2022. This was a 14.7% increase for Amherst-based research.

Less than a third of research spending from Amherst was in the life sciences field group, according to the report. By contrast, 100% of UMass Chan’s research spending was in the life sciences. Across the system, 57% of spending went to life science research, amounting to $463 million.

Of the R&D at UMass Chan, $258 million came from federal funding sources while $100 million was non-federal. Inside the life sciences space, $154 million was in the biological and biomedical sciences field and $133 million was in the health sciences field.

Annual R&D across the five campuses has increased by 23% in the last five years, according to the report. UMass has the third-largest research portfolio among universities in Massachusetts and the fourth-largest in New England, after Harvard University and MIT in Cambridge, and Yale University in Connecticut.

“The world class research being conducted at each of our nationally ranked universities is driving innovation in every region of Massachusetts and enhancing the education of our 74,000 students. The discoveries made in UMass laboratories have been critical to society’s ability to confront major challenges, from COVID-19 to climate change, and will continue to be essential in our fast-changing world,” UMass President Marty Meehan said in a Wednesday press release.