Research continues to surge at a record pace at the University of Montana, with the institution setting a record for external funding for the third year in a row.

UM brought in nearly $88 million in new funding during the past fiscal year to support homegrown Montana research, entrepreneurship and statewide outreach. This exceeds the previous year’s record of $86 million.

University researchers also set a record for expenditures from previously awarded grants and contracts in the amount of $88 million — a 12 percent increase from the previous year’s $78.5 million record total. The new expenditure total is 50 percent higher than the 2014 fiscal year amount of $58.3 million.

The number of proposals submitted by faculty for research support also increased, from 684 proposals last year to 716 this year.

Scott Whittenburg, UM vice president for research and creative scholarship, said these benchmarks all indicate that research at UM will continue to grow.

“Our upward trajectory indicates that the University of Montana continues to recruit and retain the best researchers from across the country and internationally,” he said. “The productivity of our faculty is on par with elite institutions anywhere.”

Whittenburg said UM faculty members are the foundation for UM’s growing research efforts.

“I am appreciative of our faculty’s efforts to seek new funding opportunities and to conduct world-class research,” he said. “I also acknowledge the work of staff both within the departments and in the sponsored programs office that support the faculty in their research.”

He highlighted some of UM’s newest awards brought in by faculty members.

Andrew Whiteley, an assistant professor of fisheries and conservation genomics, received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for junior faculty, the Faculty Early Career Development award or CAREER grant. Whiteley will receive more than $800,000 over five years as he and his graduate students experimentally translocate small numbers of trout among isolated natural populations as a window into understanding the effects of gene exchange. This is the fourth NSF CAREER award earned by UM assistant professors in the past two years and, Whittenburg said indicates the talent level new faculty being recruited by the University.

“What’s wonderful is that our students get to interact with and work alongside powerhouse researchers and scholars,” Whittenburg said.

UM faculty also received a $3 million NSF grant to train graduate students in innovations at the nexus of food, energy and water systems. The funding is part of the NSF Research Traineeship program and includes funding for up to 30 graduate students.

These research accomplishments and the growth of enrolled graduate students (up 200 since spring semester) indicate that the University is on a path to achieving Carnegie R1 or Research Highest Activity status to place it among the elite research universities across the country.

“What’s great about UM’s growing research sector is that labs employ a lot of people, which generates economic activity for Montana,” said Joe Fanguy, UM executive director of Accelerate MT. “UM research is also generating lots of new technology of importance to Montanans — from solutions to the pine park beetle epidemic, to advances in addressing traumatic brain injuries experienced all too often by our veterans and athletes.”

UM Sets Research Funding Record for Third Straight Year was originally published in University of Montana on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

University of Montana chemistry Assistant Professor Orion Berryman created the region’s only small-molecule X-ray facility at UM in 2014, when he purchased a single-crystal X-ray diffractometer valued at $515,000 using a grant from the National Science Foundation and support from UM’s Office of Sponsored Projects, the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy.

The state-of-the-art instrument measures tiny crystal samples to determine composition at atomic resolution. This information tells scientists what the crystals are made of and how the atoms are arranged.

The device elevated UM’s science game, but Berryman needed one more thing: someone to operate the diffractometer. UM graduate student Dan Decato was quick to volunteer for the job of crystallographer.

Since landing the job, Decato has employed X-ray crystallography to identify the shape and connectivity of molecules ranging from bizarre macrocyclic compounds only bacteria in the Berkeley Pit could have made to tracing the nitrogen backbones of potential explosives. To date he has solved over 250 structures.

But his favorite sample came from his old mentor, Jim Phillips of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“It was my first extremely air-sensitive crystal, but the most memorable part was reconnecting with a professor who had a huge influence on me,” Decato said.

Decato said he is especially grateful to Allen Oliver at the University of Notre Dame and Brian Patrick of University of British Columbia, two veteran crystallographers who have helped mentor him in this unique art.

“Their willingness to help a young crystallographer has facilitated more efficient and fruitful collaborations,” Decato said. “And meaningful collaboration is what makes what I do so interesting.”

But acting as the region’s only crystallographer is not the only thing keeping Decato busy these days. He also has been instrumental in enhancing UM’s general chemistry and advanced inorganic chemistry curricula by incorporating structure analysis into lab coursework.

Next up, Berryman will use another NSF CAREER grant to purchase a 3-D printer, which will be used to render molecular models from the X-ray data.

“The 3-D structures that X-ray diffraction affords are ideally suited for a tactile learning approach to chemical education,” Berryman said.

As for Decato, the native of Verona, Wisconsin, plans to complete his Ph.D. at UM and then parlay his crystallography experience into a job as a facility manager in a similar lab or remain in academia as a professor in a research program that heavily relies on crystallographic studies.

State-of-the-Art Science was originally published in University of Montana on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

University of Montana Professor Orion Berryman created the region’s only small-molecule X-ray facility at UM in 2014 when he purchased a single-crystal X-ray diffractometer valued at $515,000 using a grant from the National Science Foundation and support from UM’s Office of Sponsored Projects, the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy.

The state-of-the-art instrument measures tiny crystal samples to determine composition at atomic resolution. This information tells scientists what the crystals are made of and how the atoms are arranged.

The device elevated UM’s science game, but Berryman needed one more thing: someone to operate the diffractometer. UM graduate student Dan Decato was quick to volunteer for the job of crystallographer.

Since then Decato has employed X-ray crystallography to identify the shape and connectivity of molecules ranging from bizarre macrocyclic compounds only bacteria in the Berkeley Pit could have made to tracing the nitrogen backbones of potential explosives. To date he has solved over 250 structures.

But his favorite sample came from his old mentor, Jim Phillips of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“It was my first extremely air-sensitive crystal, but the most memorable part was reconnecting with a professor who had a huge influence on me,” Decato said.

Decato said he is especially grateful to Allen Oliver at the University of Notre Dame and Brian Patrick of University of British Columbia, two veteran crystallographers who have helped mentor him in this unique art.

“Their willingness to help a young crystallographer has facilitated more efficient and fruitful collaborations,” Decato said. “And meaningful collaboration is what makes what I do so interesting.”

But acting as the entire region’s only crystallographer is not the only thing keeping Decato busy these days. He also has been instrumental in enhancing UM’s general chemistry and advanced inorganic chemistry curricula by incorporating structure analysis into lab coursework.

Next up, Berryman will use another NSF CAREER grant to purchase a 3-D printer, which will be used to render molecular models from the X-ray data.

“The 3-D structures that X-ray diffraction affords is ideally suited for a tactile learning approach to chemical education,” Berryman said.

As for Decato, the native of Verona, Wisconsin, plans to complete his Ph.D. at UM and then parlay his crystallography experience into a job as a facility manager in a similar lab or remain in academia as a professor in a research program that heavily relies on crystallographic studies.