UM hits another research record at $149.9 million
(UM News Service) Please don’t call it a spin-and-puke chair, even if the special equipment in Brian Loyd’s University of Montana lab is designed to induce motion sickness. He prefers “yaw-plane rotary chair.”
In 2024, Loyd and fellow UM scientist Andy Kittelson landed a three-year, $4.8 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Their goal: develop new ways to help Navy pilots combat motion sickness. They also earned another $1.5 million Department of Defense grant to help military personnel with traumatic brain injuries regain their balance.
Their work may assist people far beyond the military, including older adults struggling with dizziness, inner-ear dysfunction, balance and gaze control.
“We are recruiting people who get motion sickness and seeing if we can reduce it,” Loyd said. “The work is important for a lot of reasons, but, of course, we’d love to help give our pilots an advantage.”
Their motion-sickness studies are just one part of UM’s robust research enterprise, which in fiscal year 2025 posted yet another record for expenditures at $149.9 million. The high mark from the previous year was $143.8 million.
Scott Whittenburg, UM vice president for research and creative scholarship, said the new record reflects broader participation across campus from units seeking federal grants.
“We’re seeing more involvement from units that historically have not pursued external funding,” said Whittenburg, who has overseen 12 years of continual research growth at UM. “While our overall increase this year is modest, the growth is coming from more places across campus, and that’s encouraging.”
He said Zach Rossmiller, UM’s chief information officer, offers an example of a unit that doesn’t historically chase federal grants and contracts. Rossmiller leads UM Information Technology, and he helped land $3.4 million in grants to help boost the University’s IT research infrastructure.
But has UM reached the zenith of its research growth? Whittenburg said expenditures represent a “lagging indicator,” reflecting spending from multiyear grants awarded in prior cycles. In FY25, federal agencies tightened the purse strings and issued significantly fewer requests for proposals. This is an issue for universities nationwide.
Whittenburg said UM submitted 720 grant or contract proposals in 2024, and that number dropped to 564 last year. This will likely result in fewer awards in the coming year.
“There is uncertainty about what the trajectory will look like,” he said. “Because our awards typically span three to five years, the impact of fewer proposals is smoothed. But at some point, fewer proposals will mean fewer awards and, eventually, lower research expenditures.”