UMBC Research Fast Facts

UMBC is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a Research University (High Research Activity).

UMBC's rank among universities conducting research and development has increased steadily in the last eight years, according to the NSF:

• In 1995, UMBC ranked 178th in expenditures of federally financed R&D; by 2005 (the most recent year for data) UMBC ranked 140th.
• For total R&D expenditures from multiple sources, UMBC ranked 228th in 1995; for 2005  the university was ranked 152nd, with more than $58.4 million in support.

UMBC is ranked 3rd among all universities in 2005 receiving funding from NASA, accounting for approximately 2.3% of total NASA funding for the fiscal year and ranks 12th in total federally financed NASA R&D expenditures, in same cohort as the University of Alabama-Huntsville, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Johns Hopkins University.

Among the first 100 universities and colleges receiving federally financed R&D expenditures in the environmental sciences, UMBC ranks 23rd with $15.6 million, more than any other University System of Maryland institution in 2005.

UMBC ranks third in the nation among all universities in the number of scientific journal articles citations in the geosciences, according to Thomson Scientific's Science Watch.

UMBC is home to more than 25 research centers across many areas, addressing such diverse subject areas as the Center for History Education , Center For Art and Visual Culture , Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research , Center for Women and Information Technology and Center for the Advanced Study of Photonics Research .

UMBC's efforts to build a comprehensive, supportive environment for women and minority graduate students and faculty have received national recognition:

• UMBC was among a small number of universities to receive a multi-year, multi-million-dollar ADVANCE grant from the NSF in recognition of our strengths in preparing women in science and engineering.
• The university received a major grant through NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program to prepare more minority Ph.D.s in science, creating the PROMISE program.
• UMBC’s ACTiVATE program has formed over ten companies since the program’s inception of the program in 2004. Supported by a $712K grant from the National Science Foundation's Partnerships For Innovation program (NSF-PFI), ACTiVATE addresses this need by recruiting, training, and supporting mid-career women who are serious about becoming technology entrepreneurs.

In FY 2000, UMBC won a competitive cooperative agreement award of $75 million over a five-year period with NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center to establish the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology (GEST) Center for collaborative studies in the earth sciences. In September 2006, UMBC received another large research center, the Center for Space Science and Technology, CSST, formed by a partnership of the two leading University of Maryland campuses, College Park and Baltimore County. This center serves as the administrative unit for UMBC's participation in the CRESST consortium, which works to increase the involvement of minority and women scientists in space science research and to facilitate university student participation in such research.