email: elinck@wisc.edu
netid: elinck
Part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) mission--and one of several main reasons for its existence--is to support economic development and science and technology research across the country. NASA is one of the largest funders of basic and applied research in the federal government. Its annual budget over the last decade has been approximately $20 billion a year accounting for inflation, with a large fraction of that going to research and technology development activities. Although NASA may be most well known for human exploration and space sciences research, NASA funds a large variety of research in other fields, including Earth sciences (e.g., geology, oceanography, atmospheric science), biology (e.g., extremophile organisms), healthcare (e.g., human physiology in extreme environments, medical devices), and aviation (e.g., fuel efficient aircraft design). Funds for these research activities go to many entities across the United States, including private companies, non-profit organizations, and universities. The purpose of this project is to evaluate NASA's spending at institutions of higher education over the last decade to examine trends and understand the nature of NASA's spending on research. Of particular interest is whether NASA's research funding is equitably distributed between the states or if it is concentrated in certain regions. The audience of this project is federal policy makers.
Data for this project comes from publicly reported NASA grants and contracts to institutions of higher education from fiscal year (FY) 2009-2019. Information about my data sources and data may be found here. The results of my research can be found here. I would also like to acknowledge the people who helped me in this project.