SIU’s students and staff have received $95.7 million in research grants during the 2023 fiscal year according to the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration webpage.

The Carbondale campus received $68 million and the Springfield location received $27 million.

“We did proposals from SIU last year of $194 million, we received $96 million,” said Costas Tsatsoulis, the Vice Chancellor of Research. “[And] we write about 400 grants a year.”

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According to the reward report, they received grants from federal government agencies, private industries and foundations, state agencies and one foreign agency.

Grants were sent to companies and agencies such as NASA, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tsatsoulis said.

Tsatsoulis described an example of how that funding gets distributed.

“We’re working with whitetail deer and how they transmit COVID-19,” Tsatsoulis said. “There’s an announcement saying we want to see if we can receive somebody who’s willing to research… then our faculty with the office here is called OSPA, the Office of Sponsored Program Administration, and they submit the paperwork necessary for the grant proposal.”

According to the SIU School of Medicine website, there are 42 active clinical trials and research studies going on, including multiple on Alzheimer’s Disease, various causes of seizures, and research on how various bacteria affect people.

Tsatsoulis said the paperwork includes a detailed description of the work they intend to do, the resumes of the faculty and students intended to work on it, and the budget which usually covers the stipend for students and faculty and the equipment needed.

“They have focused on grants where we have expertise, we have facilities, we have a history of doing it,” Tsatsoulis said. “They’ve written very good proposals and we’ve been hitting very successful on things.”

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Research projects can last from months to years, Tsatsoulis said.

“After your first three years, if you do well you can get another three years,” Tsatsoulis said. “Part of the faculty members’ workload is to perform research.”

Overseers from sponsored agencies of the research projects also come on visits or students and faculty visit the agencies to do presentations on the progress or results.

Research and Innovation are one of the many pillars a part of Imagine SIU 2030 and the majority of the research funding goes towards the students and their work, Tsatsoulis said.

“The money goes to support the students as one of the pillars of Student Success and Engagement,” Tsatsoulis said. “A student who is engaged in research in the lab and so on has a much higher probability of graduating so that is student success.”

The research is directly related to the students’ success.

“The research that we do so supports the students, supports research infrastructure,” Tsatsoulis said. “So, a lot of it can be very expensive; the equipment that we use, the fieldwork that we do, the studio that we have, all these require a lot of expensive equipment and that allows the students to be working with the latest equipment that they will work with when they graduate.”

Only a few months into the 2024 fiscal year, Tsatsoulis said they’ve already doubled their requests from this point in previous years.

Ongoing updates on SIU’s research funds can be found on the SIU website on the OSPA page under resources and reports.

Staff reporter Jamilah Lewis can be reached at [email protected]. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

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