U.L. Lafayette is now ranked among the nation’s top 100 public research universities. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) annual Higher Education Research & Development Survey (HERD) ranks ULL 94th among 655 colleges that do research. V.P. for Research & Innovation at ULL Dr. Ramesh Kolluru says it’s an important distinction for a Louisiana university…:
“This is a big deal for Louisiana; to have a public university – in addition to LSU of course – that is also in the Top 100,” he says.
Last year, ULL invested over $181-million in R & D; a 193-percent increase in funding over 8 years. Kolluru says ULL’s contributions to science and health are something few people are aware of…including one very major project in recent years…:
“We were involved in the development of the COVID 19 vaccine that was the first vaccine that got FDA approval for COVID 19 emergency authorization.”
In addition to COVID vaccine research that led the Pfizer shots, ULL has been active in numerous ground breaking R & D advances. Kolluru says the university is always competitive in obtaining federal and state grants and private sector contracts. He says ULL is proud to have the designation as an NSF Center of Excellence in Big Data and Data Science…:
“We are now expanding to include artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are thing that people care deeply about and are going to be the challenges of today and tomorrow.”
Kolluru expects that ULL’s ranking among R & D colleges will rise even higher next year, as more is invested in cutting edge research.
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