BOZEMAN – For the fourth consecutive 12 months, analysis expenditures at Montana State College have topped $200 million, mainly within the type of grants which have supported functions starting from agriculture and cybersecurity to well being and rural schooling.
MSU’s annual analysis expenditures totaled $288.7 million throughout the 2024-25 fiscal 12 months, in response to the college’s annual report back to the Nationwide Science Basis. MSU is the primary and solely establishment within the state to surpass $200 million in analysis expenditures, and its analysis enterprise is bigger than all different private and non-private universities within the state mixed.
“Whereas we’re extraordinarily proud to have set one other report in analysis expenditures, the guts of college analysis is its constructive influence on our state and its folks,” mentioned Alison Harmon, MSU’s vice chairman for analysis and financial improvement. “The alternatives supplied to college students and college by way of analysis, in addition to the financial, societal and well being advantages that these initiatives have for our communities, are the crux of our land-grant mission, and seeing these advantages in motion is the best reward.”
This 12 months’s report expenditures symbolize a rise of roughly 12% over the earlier 12 months’s whole of $257.9 million.
Throughout the 2024-25 12 months, MSU school and researchers submitted 731 funding proposals. In that point, 525 new awards had been funded totaling $128.2 million. Of the brand new whole expenditures, $14.5 million supported analysis by 654 graduate college students and 803 undergraduate college students, lots of the latter by way of the Undergraduate Students Program.
“Our school and researchers are terribly devoted and gifted people whose efforts have actual, direct influence on lives and communities in Montana,” mentioned MSU President Brock Tessman. “Moreover, seeing the analysis completed by our college students beneath their management and understanding that our graduates are ready to proceed that influence is so gratifying. The ripple results from analysis that begins at Montana State lengthen far past our campus.”
Roughly 92% of MSU’s analysis expenditures got here through competitively awarded funds by way of federal companies, together with the departments of Protection, Well being and Human Providers, Agriculture, the Nationwide Science Basis and NASA. The remaining 8% of funding got here from non-public sources and from the state.
The School of Agriculture led the college with $54.1 million in analysis spending, adopted by the School of Letters and Science with $40.6 million and Norm Asbjornson School of Engineering with $24.5 million.
MSU MilTech, now a part of the newly launched Institute for Nationwide Safety Analysis and Schooling, led college non-college applications in expenditures with a report $64.7 million. It was adopted by the MSU TechLink Middle with $11.1 million, Montana INBRE – the IDeA Community of Biomedical Analysis Excellence – with $4.4 million, and the Western Transportation Institute with $3.5 million.
MSU is considered one of solely 104 establishments within the U.S. to each obtain an R1 designation for its “very excessive analysis spending and doctorate manufacturing” and be categorised for group engagement by the Carnegie Classification of Establishments of Increased Schooling. MSU has additionally been named among the many prime 3.7% universities on the earth based mostly on schooling, analysis and employability by the Middle for World College Rankings. It was the highest-ranked college in Montana.
Analysis completed at MSU throughout the 2025 fiscal 12 months and ongoing initiatives embrace:
Pat Secor of the Division of Microbiology and Cell Biology obtained a $2.8 million grant to advance analysis on Lyme illness. Lyme illness will be transmitted by blacklegged ticks, the primary of which was recognized in Montana earlier this 12 months.
Assistant professor of civil engineering Siwei He obtained funding from EPSCoR, the Established Program to Stimulate Aggressive Analysis, to conduct analysis centered on bettering flood forecasting.
A $3 million NSF grant is facilitating a program the Division of Schooling to assist dozens of science, know-how, engineering and math lecturers in rural and underserved areas of Montana as they work towards graduate levels in science schooling or deepen their experience as lecturers.
With a grant from the Merck Basis, MSU’s nursing faculty helped carry oncology companies to Barrett Hospital and HealthCare in Dillon. With a brand new infusion middle that opened in October, scores of rural sufferers can obtain care near dwelling as an alternative of touring over two hours to a hospital in Bozeman.
Cara Palmer within the Division of Psychology led a examine to find out whether or not frequent sleep habits of youngsters contribute to later psychiatric problems, comparable to substance abuse and despair.
A group within the Division of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology led by Michelle Flenniken studied the influence of viral an infection on honeybees with the goal of mitigating inhabitants losses and offering new information for the beekeepers who handle Montana’s greater than 250,000 honeybee colonies.
Giorgio Morales, a doctoral scholar within the Gianforte Faculty of Computing, explored the usage of synthetic intelligence to synthesize on-farm information and assist farmers maximize crop yields by dialing in information on all the things from soil vitamins to humidity.
MSU’s nursing faculty is working with native companions to extend the state’s variety of sexual assault nurse examiners, who present complete bodily exams to victims of sexual assault and join victims to advocates, survivor companies and different follow-up care. This system is on monitor to satisfy its aim of coaching 40 of those responders in its first 12 months.
In an inter-college collaboration, Anna Schweiger within the School of Agriculture and Danielle Ulrich within the School of Letters and Science used NSF funding to check carbohydrates saved in whitebark pine bushes, a essential native species to Montana’s subalpine ecosystems, and the way these carbohydrates have an effect on the bushes’ skills to resist and recuperate from drought.
The Buffalo Nations Meals System Initiative obtained funding to supply schooling and conduct analysis in assist of Indigenous meals sovereignty centered on the folks of the Northern Nice Plains and Rocky Mountains. The challenge goals to revitalize cultural information, increase meals system analysis and improve engagement.
Supported by a $1 million award from the W.M. Keck Basis, Dana Rashid continued work researching the hyperlink between irritation and skeletal improvement, which may provide insights into how anti-inflammatory medicine influence sufferers’ bone constructions.
MSU Extension, with funding from the Montana Division of Public Well being and Human Providers, expanded its assist applications for unpaid household caregivers throughout Montana.
Graduate college students within the Division of Land Assets and Environmental Sciences printed new findings on the administration of wheat stem sawflies. One of many state’s most prevalent agricultural pests, sawflies precipitated roughly $66 million price of crop losses in Montana in 2024.
Extra details about analysis funding and applications at MSU will be discovered at montana.edu/analysis/.
