Stimulus Funding: MOL, CHE, COS win big

Early this year President Obama signed into law American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), a stimulus bill. Of the $787 billion, $8.9 was to be spent on scientific research in the next 18 months. Now, 10 months later, awards have been announced and the University has received $23 million in research funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for over 60 projects. Prior to this, the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab received $15.6 million.


The big spender was the NSF, which funded 64 percent of the projects. The big winners, on the other hand, were the Molecular Biology, Chemical Engineering and Computer Science Departments, whose members received the most funding. By far the biggest project is that headed up Professor Ilhan Aksay of the Chemical Engineering Department. His group received $2.9 million to study the impact of nanocatalysts on hydrocarbon jet fuels.