Wisconisn Alumni Research Foundation grants $59m to the university directly for the fiscal year.
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (Warf), a non-profit organisation supporting research and commercialisation at University of Wisconsin, Madison, is granting the university $59m for the 2014 to 2015 fiscal year.
A further $14.3m is awarded to Morgridge Institute for Research, a private non-profit collaborating with the university on commercialisation of biomedical research.
The grant to Madison will support law and entrepreneurship clinics with $700,000. That chunk of the money will also cover D2P, a newly created programme to enhance the local ecosystem and bring more venture capital to Wisconsin state.
A total of $9m is being used to recruit and retain faculty, with an additional $5m specifically for the chancellor’s recruitment and retention initiative. Meanwhile graduate fellowships will be supported with $9.7m. The funding also allows the continuation of Madison’s cluster hire initiative, a programme aimed at increasing interdisciplinary studies, which receives $5m.
Federal grant bridge funding will be supported with $3m, while the Fall Research Competition receives $8.5m. The competition has been running for some hundred years and has departments send in a total of about 120 research proposals each year.
Rebecca Blank, chancellor at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said: “Warf’s continuing investment is critical to our success as a research institution. Historically, Warf’s annual grants and other initiatives and investments have been highly important, enabling graduate student support, faculty recruitment and retention, and the ability of faculty members to pursue lines of research that might not otherwise be possible. Warf’s many contributions help us maintain our excellence.”