The University of Rhode Island has seen an increase in federal research funding this year, despite anxieties and guidance surrounding the fight for grants.
Brenton DeBoef, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, said that URI had a 5% increase in federal funding this year, whereas MIT saw a 20% decrease.
“We are not doing as bad as other places in terms of federal funding,” DeBoef said. “Year over year, I still think that the federal funding landscape is changing, and we can’t just sit on our laurels. We are going to have to adapt.”
DeBoef said he attributes URI’s success to its diverse portfolio of research.
“URI is quite unique in that we have so much of the ocean-related research, more than a place like MIT might have,” DeBoef said. “We kind of have that extra tool in our toolbox.”
In addition to URI’s biomedical and other science-based research, DeBoef said there has also been an increase in defense-related research.
URI Communications sent out an email providing updates on changes with recent federal actions, including federal research funding and research compliance, on Sept. 14. The email advised researchers to continue fighting for their funding.
DeBoef said this language had to do with the discrepancies between the government’s fiscal year and the university’s. The federal government waits until the end of their fiscal year, which occurred on Wednesday, Sept. 30, to release all the funds.
“We were basically advising our faculty to call their program officers at the federal agencies and make sure it was coming, and it looks like it did,” DeBoef said. “We were just nervous about that process.”
Nearly 1,000 to 1,500 faculty and students could be doing research across URI’s campuses on any given year, according to DeBoef.
“All of the tenure track professors should be doing research, so that’s easily half the faculty,” DeBoef said. “Definitely all of the Ph.D. students are involved in research. There’s about 600 of them, and a lot of the masters students are doing it as well.”
As the federal funding landscape for research changes, DeBoef said many researchers have turned to corporations and private funding entities to help support their work.
“There’s some really cool stories of faculty that are starting their own companies as ways to do the research,” DeBoef said.
During URI’s Tech Showcase on Sept. 22, researchers pitched their ideas to venture capitalists in a “Shark Tank” style setting.
“Last year, URI spun out three companies that were all funded by venture capital, so that’s maybe the future of all of this,” DeBoef said.
The last critical change that occurred to URI research was at the end of March 2025, when the university eliminated USAID-funded positions as a result of the federal government issuing a stop-work order in January 2025, according to Rhody Today.
“Most people here are paid directly by the university,” DeBoef said. “You would call that hard money funding, but people that are paid by grants are often called ‘soft money funded.’”
DeBoef said that soft money funded employees have to be laid off in situations like the USAID cuts, because there is no money to pay those researchers with. Almost all of the employees have now been hired back into hard money positions.
According to DeBoef, URI is now writing more grant proposals than in previous history.
“This is what makes us a premiere university,” DeBoef said.
