UT, BGSU receive PhD funds

10/18/2007

The University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University are two of the 12 PhD-granting universities in Ohio that will receive state funding for doctoral research programs.

In the third year of the Innovation Incentive Program, UT will receive nearly $250,000 in state funding for fiscal year 2008 and BGSU will get about $140,000, the Ohio Board of Regents has announced.

The Innovation Incentive Program encourages universities to focus on a smaller number of strong doctoral research programs that will lead to economic growth.

The universities are asked to reallocate 1.5 percent of their individual state funding for doctoral student enrollments throughout the 10-year program for these specific research projects, which would add up to 15 percent allocated to these research projects at the end of the program.

Under the program, which is in its third year, the universities are asked to reallocate 4.5 percent of their funding. For UT, that's about $316,000 this fiscal year and about $404,000 for BGSU.

This year, however, the state only has the funds to allocate 3 percent, the same amount as last year.

UT's areas of research concentration are translational medicine - ways to move medical research into clinical applications - and alternative energy with solar-cell technologies.

BGSU is partnering with UT in alternative energy research and is focusing its research on molecular photonics - the exploration of the principles governing the interaction of light with matter.