America's R&D Capitals
May 10, 2004

By James Klein, Larta VOX Editor

Los Angeles came in first place for U.S. cities in R&D expenditures among the top 100 ranked universities, according to data for 2001 (the most recent year data is available) collected by the National Science Foundation. The data included all sources of R&D funding, including government and private sources. Los Angeles came in second place for the five-year period of 1997-2001 behind the surprise winner, Baltimore.

Using criteria that defines cities as directly adjacent metropolitan areas ("Los Angeles" includes Pasadena, "Boston" includes Cambridge, "San Francisco" includes Berkeley but not Stanford), Los Angeles edged out Baltimore for the last year data was available, 2001. Los Angeles universities received $1,249,483,000 in R&D, distributed among the University of California Los Angeles, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Southern California.

Baltimore came in just behind Los Angeles in 2001, with $1,238,253,000, garnered by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, though Baltimore was primarily buoyed in all categories by Johns Hopkins University, which received the most R&D funding in 2001 and for 1997-2001 among all universities in the United States.

New York City came in third place in 2001, largely because the city had far more universities included in the top 100, rather than the strength of any single institution. New York City universities, which include Columbia University, New York University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Yeshiva University, and Rockefeller University, totaled $1,015,966,000 in R&D expenditures.

Boston, which includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Boston University, came in fourth place in 2001 with $979,633,000 in university R&D expenditures. San Francisco ranked closely behind Boston with $971,248,000 in R&D expenditures by the University of San Francisco and the University of California Berkeley.

The top twenty cities for 2001 R&D expenditures are:

1. Los Angeles, California
2. Baltimore, Maryland
3. New York, New York
4. Boston, Massachusetts
5. San Francisco, California
6. Houston, Texas
7. Chicago, Illinois
8. Madison, Wisconsin
9. Ann Arbor, Michigan
10. Seattle Washington
11. San Diego, California
12. Stanford, California
13. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
14. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
15. Ithaca, New York
16. Davis, California
17. College Station, Texas
18. St. Louis, Missouri
19. Urbana-Champagne, Illinois
20. Columbus, Ohio

Baltimore surprisingly ranked first in total combined expenditures for the years of 1997 through 2001, with $5,340,166,000 in total expenditures, while Los Angeles universities received $5,011,235,000. Boston came in third place for 1997-2001, receiving $4,469,907,000 in R&D, edging out San Francisco, which garnered $4,322,565,000 in R&D contributions. New York City came in fifth place for the period of 1997-2001, with $4,185,907,000 in R&D expenditures.

Chicago and Houston occupied sixth and seventh places for 2001 and for the five-year period of 1997-2001, with Houston leading Chicago in 2001, capturing $716,646,000 in R&D compared to Chicago's $685,156,000. However, Chicago beat Houston for the five-year period of 1997-2001, receiving $2,886,533,000 to Houston's $2,765,976,000. Chicago included Northwestern University, the University of Illinois Chicago, and University of Chicago, while Houston has the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center.

The top twenty cities for 1997-2001 R&D expenditures are:

1. Baltimore, Maryland
2. Los Angeles, California
3. Boston, Massachusetts
4. San Francisco, California
5. New York, New York
6. Chicago, Illinois
7. Houston, Texas
8. Ann Arbor, Michigan
9. Madison, Wisconsin
10. Seattle Washington
11. San Diego, California
12. Stanford, California
13. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
14. College Station, Texas
15. Ithaca, New York
16. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
17. Urbana-Champagne, Illinois
18. Columbus, Ohio
19. Davis, California
20. Tucson, Arizona

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