University of Michigan - Academics - Research

Research

See also: List of University of Michigan faculty and staff

The university is one of the founding members (1900) of the Association of American Universities. With over 6,200 faculty members, 73 of whom are members of the National Academy and 471 of whom hold an endowed chair in their discipline, the university manages one of the largest annual collegiate research budgets of any university in the United States, totaling about $1 billion in 2009. The Medical School spent the most at over US $445 million, while the College of Engineering was second at more than $160 million. U-M also has a technology transfer office, which is the university conduit between laboratory research and corporate commercialization interests. In 2009, the university consummated a deal to purchase a facility formerly owned by Pfizer. The acquisition includes over 170 acres (0.69 km2) of property, and 30 major buildings comprising roughly 1,600,000 feet (490,000 m2) of wet laboratory space, and 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2) of administrative space. As of the purchase date, the university's intentions for the space were not announced, but the expectation is that the new space will allow the university to ramp up its research and ultimately employ in excess of 2,000 people.

The university is also a major contributor to the medical field with the EKG, gastroscope, and the announcement of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine. The university's 13,000-acre (53 km2) biological station in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan is one of only 47 Biosphere Reserves in the United States.

In the mid-1960s U-M researchers worked with IBM to develop a new virtual memory architectural model that became part of IBM's Model 360/67 mainframe computer (the 360/67 was initially dubbed the 360/65M where the "M" stood for Michigan). The Michigan Terminal System (MTS), an early time-sharing computer operating system developed at U-M, was the first system outside of IBM to use the 360/67's virtual memory features. In the late 1960s U-M, together with Michigan State University and Wayne State University, founded the Merit Network, one of the first university computer networks. The Merit Network was then and remains today administratively hosted by U-M. Another major contribution took place in 1987 when a proposal submitted by the Merit Network together with its partners IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan won a national competition to upgrade and expand the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) backbone from 56,000 to 1.5 million, and later to 45 million bits per second. NSFNET was the precursor to today's Internet.

In 2006, U-M joined with Michigan State University and Wayne State University to create the University Research Corridor. This effort was undertaken to highlight the capabilities of the state's three leading research institutions and drive the transformation of Michigan's economy. The three universities are electronically interconnected via the Michigan LambdaRail (MiLR, pronounced 'MY-lar'). MiLR enables researchers at MSU, U-M and WSU to transfer data at 10 billion bits per second or 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the Internet connections normally used in homes and businesses. The speed and reliability of MiLR will enable doctors to perform virtual surgery at remote locations. It provides the capacity for physicists to share exceptionally large data sets with their colleagues around the world. MiLR will also serve as a test-bed for experimental research on networking itself. It employs advanced optical electronics and uses more than 750 miles (1,210 km) of fiber-optic cable to connect the universities to other national and international networks in Chicago including Internet2, National LambdaRail, StarLight, and an emerging set of networks that play key roles in the national cyberinfrastructure supporting advanced science and research.

U-M is home to the National Election Studies and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. The Correlates of War project, also located at U-M, is an accumulation of scientific knowledge about war. The university is also home to major research centers in optics, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, wireless integrated microsystems, and social sciences. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Life Sciences Institute are located at the university. The Institute for Social Research (ISR), the nation's longest-standing laboratory for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, is home to the Survey Research Center, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Center for Political Studies, Population Studies Center, and Inter-Consortium for Political and Social Research. Undergraduate students are able to participate in various research projects through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) as well as the UROP/Creative-Programs.

The U-M library system comprises nineteen individual libraries with twenty-four separate collections—roughly 9.6 million volumes, growing at the rate of 177,000 volumes a year. U-M was the original home of the JSTOR database, which contains about 750,000 digitized pages from the entire pre-1990 backfile of ten journals of history and economics, and has initiated a book digitization program in collaboration with Google. The University of Michigan Press is also a part of the U-M library system.

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Famous quotes containing the word research:

    I did my research and decided I just had to live it.
    Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)

    The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?
    Ron Taffel (20th century)

    The working woman may be quick to see any problems with children as her fault because she isn’t as available to them. However, the fact that she is employed is rarely central to the conflict. And overall, studies show, being employed doesn’t have negative effects on children; carefully done research consistently makes this clear.
    Grace Baruch (20th century)