UA News

The grants will will a wide range of endeavors and will influence the creation or preservation of the equivalent of 157 full-time jobs in Arizona.

The University of Arizona has won more than $81 million in competitive grants for 122 research projects that will fund a wide range of endeavors, including enhancing science education for high school students, advancing a wide range of research projects and accelerating regional economic development activities.

The UA estimates that this funding, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will influence the creation or preservation of the equivalent of 157 full-time jobs in Arizona. The number of actual jobs affected is anticipated to be far higher, because most positions affected will be part-time.

The $81 million in competitive grants awarded to date is in addition to $60.8 million the UA already has received from ARRA's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Those funds, expended in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009 and helped to create or preserve the equivalent of about 672 full-time jobs.

The State Fiscal Stabilization funding resulted in the availability of one-time dollars that allowed the University to eliminate the need to implement a furlough, support instructional expenditures, continue the Mosaic enterprise system replacement project and begin to address health, safety and code-related building renewal issues.

The 122 research awards have come from 449 requests UA faculty have submitted for more than $370 million in ARRA-funded research projects, and the UA awaits word on more federal awards it hopes are yet to come.

Those grants are enabling UA researchers to address critical societal needs including the development of affordable solar energy generation, improving watershed management in the Southwest, training the next generation of high school science teachers, developing safe and effective drugs and advancing cancer and heart disease research.

"The UA has long been a critical resource to the state of Arizona in creating jobs, boosting the economy and training the workforce," said UA President Robert N. Shelton. "We are grateful for the investment in our people through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and will use these funds to stimulate the economy through education, research and outreach."

The UA has submitted hundreds of other proposals for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as ARRA, grants and expects millions of dollars in additional funding for research initiatives.

"It is only because we have many of the nation's leading researchers that we have been able to generate such extraordinary support through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," said UA Provost Meredith Hay. "We have world-class researchers who are changing medicine, improving lives and ensuring we have a sustainable Arizona."

"The sheer effort that UA faculty and staff have put into applying for ARRA funds is phenomenal," said Leslie Tolbert, UA vice president for research, graduate studies and economic development. "The grants will put people to work on projects that promise to have a significant impact inside the university and beyond."

The Economic Development Administration – with funding through the ARRA – awarded the UA a $4.7 million grant to construct phase one infrastructure improvements at the Arizona Bioscience Park.

The grant will fund critically important on-site infrastructure improvements at the Arizona Bioscience Park including roads, water systems (potable, waste, storm and reclaimed), dry utilities – including gas, electricity and telecommunications – and perimeter landscaping.

As part of the federal stimulus legislation passed, this project is considered "shovel ready" with all infrastructure improvements designed.

"The Arizona Bioscience Park will provide the Tucson region with a comprehensive training and research facility that will work to boost workforce training, research and development opportunities, higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs, and private sector investment in the bioscience sector," said Gary Locke, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary.

The Arizona Bioscience Park will be built on 54 acres of land at the corner of 36th Street and Kino Parkway in Tucson. The park is part of larger master-planned, mixed-use development known as The Bridges that includes retail and residential development.

A $1 million ARRA grant from the National Science Foundation is supporting the UA's Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which provides financial and academic support to top graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Each fellow, who is pursuing a master's or doctoral degree, receives a $30,000-a-year stipend for three years, a cost-of-education allowance and financial assistance for travel expenses.
 
The grants enable the UA to compete with the nation's leading research institutions for top graduate students.

Currently, there are 32 NSF Graduate Research Fellows at the UA.

"NSF's support for graduate research fellows, along with its support of doctoral dissertation research improvement grants, are a key way to support talented students in our graduate programs," said Andrew Comrie, dean of the UA Graduate College. "These valuable awards are not only prestigious, bringing recognition to excellent students and their graduate programs at the UA, but they support world-class research by tomorrow's leading minds."

The fellows represent a variety of disciplines including sociology, neuroscience, hydrology and linguistics.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded a five-year, $4.35 million ARRA grant to the UA to establish a "Critical Zone Observatory" in the Southwest.

The zone from the treetops to the bottom of the groundwater table has been dubbed the "critical zone" because of its key role in processing and cycling water, carbon and nutrients necessary for life.

To figure out how the ecological, geological and hydrological components of the critical zone interact, principal investigator Jon Chorover, a UA professor of soil, water and environmental science, and his colleagues will study two different mountain-and-basin areas in the desert Southwest – the Santa Catalina Mountains outside Tucson, Ariz., and the Valles Caldera National Preserve near Los Alamos, N.M.

Comparing the same processes in different climates will help scientists figure out how the critical zone's properties will change under climate change, said co-principal investigator Peter Troch, a UA professor of hydrology and water resources.

The scientists have already begun research at the Valles Caldera and in Marshall Gulch at the top of the Santa Catalinas.

In addition, findings from the research will complement those from the new experiment at the UA's Biosphere 2. A team of scientists, including some from the Critical Zone Observatory team, are using the UA's Biosphere 2 as a gigantic controlled-environment laboratory to test how water moves through a variety of artificial hill slopes.

Chorover said, "We would be hard-pressed to find another university in the entire country that has the human resources to do truly integrated Critical Zone Observatory science at the scale that we're going to do it."

Karl W. Flessa, director of UA's new School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said the Critical Zone Observatory project capitalizes on the school's strengths.

"It's a bold and imaginative effort," Flessa wrote in an e-mail. "This project is a great example of how the new school can bring together a great interdisciplinary team to tackle important problems in the earth and environmental sciences."