Cutting-edge research at region’s universities impacts our daily lives

In mid-February, the Carnegie Foundation named the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks an R1 institution, the highest designation for research activity among universities in the United States. The designation means the institution has research expenditures of more than $50 million and awards at least 70 research doctorates annually. With this achievement, UND joins a peer group of institutions including Harvard, Stanford and Yale, as well as the University of Minnesota, among others.

“This recognition highlights UND’s exceptional commitment to research and discovery. It serves as a testament to the momentum we have generated through the hard work of so many faculty, students, and staff members and through our exceptional growth in research funding, including that supported by North Dakota’s elected leaders,” UND President Andy Armacost said when announcing the coveted designation.

Scott Snyder, vice president of Research and Economic Development at UND, said the university’s research expenditures have increased from $110 million five years ago to $180 million, with nearly $18 million coming from industry.

“It’s a testament to the really innovative, hard work that our university partners are doing, our university faculty staff and students are doing, to propel research forward at the university,” Snyder said.

The R1 designation also helps the university attract high-caliber faculty as well as graduate students who may only want to perform research with an R1 institution.

The research done at universities across the region impacts industry in numerous ways. It creates a foundation for big advancements in sectors such as energy, national security, health and medicine and even economics.

UND is home to the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), where researchers develop technologies to help make energy production more efficient and environmentally friendly. EERC leads the way with industry partnerships at UND, but partnerships are made across a variety of disciplines, Snyder said.

“John Oncken (CEO of True North Equipment in Grand Forks, a John Deere equipment dealer) was just commenting to me and President Armacost about how great it has been to work with graduate students to solve some of the technical challenges that they have at True North surrounding their sensing and equipment and other things related to really advanced agricultural equipment,” Snyder shared. “That's been a really great partnership between our graduate school and True North.”

He said industry partnerships are a big part of workforce development because students get exposure to what it’s like to work with the industry, which gives them a leg up when it’s time to join the workforce.

The UAS (unmanned aircraft system) efforts in Grand Forks are another area where UND researchers are working with industry to evolve products and systems such as Project ULTRA, which has a goal of going from research to practice and demonstrating a variety of UAS applications that will benefit Grand Forks Air Force Base and provide a template for UAS activities across the country. Last year, the Department of Defense tasked Project ULTRA with developing the capability to deliver military cargo using UAS.

North Dakota State University

About an hour’s drive south to the campus of North Dakota State University in Fargo, the work of researchers is helping to support startups and small businesses through accessible tools such as research tech parks and electro-microscopy. Notable research includes precision agriculture, AI and autonomous trucking.

Cynthia Graffeo, Innovation and Economic Development director in the Office of Research and Creative Activity at NDSU, said the university maintains its R1 designation, reflecting $190.3 million in research expenditures in fiscal year 2023, a fifth consecutive year of record-breaking investments.

Graffeo, who worked in economic development in the Fargo-Moorhead area for a decade before joining NDSU, said one of the hidden gems at the university is the maker space and the research tech park, where companies can test out their inventions for a reasonable price.

“We're accessible, we're local, and we have things that can help a small business or a startup get farther faster,” Graffeo said.

“Pretty much every student on campus is connected and conducting research in some way, shape or form,” she said. “We're really proud of that fact. It's an applied education so that when our students hit the workforce, they are ready to hit the ground running. We have undergrads who are starting businesses, we have graduate students who are starting businesses. We have faculty grad student groups, and companies going through the I-Corps (National Science Foundation Innovation Corps) program and creating spin-offs, as well. So really, any step of the way, if somebody has an idea for a business or a product, that's really what my office is here for, is to help them,” she said.

About 18 months ago, NDSU made a commitment to commercialization and economic development within the division of research and creative activity, she said.

“We’re working with our friends in the economic development ecosystem, so everyone from the EDC to Emerging Prairie, to really make sure that we have our finger on the pulse of our community,” she said.

As a land-grant university, NDSU is at the forefront of agricultural research, which includes not only seed varietals but precision ag, robotics and algorithms identifying weeds, for example.

“It's big data and cybersecurity because as you're using those algorithms and smart ag tech, we need to process big data. We need the computer scientists and the engineers behind that, so we always like to say food security is national security. It is a broad spectrum,” Graffeo said.

Health care is another area where NDSU is leading the way in the state. North Dakota’s largest nursing program is housed there, and a master’s program in diagnostic medical sonography is being added.

 South Dakota State University

Efforts are underway to achieve the R1 designation at South Dakota State University as part of the university’s Pathway to Premier 2030 strategic plan.

“It is our land-grant responsibility to help solve the multi-faceted problems we face. Those solutions will also bring opportunity. We can best help our state and region solve these problems and harvest the associated opportunities with R1 status,” SDSU President Barry H. Dunn said.

Professor Daniel Scholl, vice president for Research and Economic Development at SDSU, spoke about the university's research impact on industry, highlighting historical achievements like Edgar McFadden's wheat stem rust resistance breeding and ongoing collaborations with companies like General Mills.

“We had a student here named Edgar McFadden who went on to get a Ph.D. and become a faculty member at a handful of different institutions, but being here with SDSU faculty provided him the scope for imagination and the wherewithal to try to do something impossible, and he succeeded,” Scholl said.

McFadden was in the U.S. Army during WWI and spent most of his career working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. He developed rust-resistant varieties of wheat that led to the prevention of starvation by millions of people.

“By making this cross-domesticated wheat that essentially conferred a natural resistance to wheat stem rust and wheat stem rust was affecting wheat crops globally at the time, which obviously had a negative impact on the ability to feed people. At a time when genetic technologies of today were not available, he achieved that. And the germplasm that came from that is still circulating in wheat varieties today, in breeding programs globally,” Scholl explained.

SDSU continues its breeding programs for variety crops, variety development programs as well as winter wheat, spring wheat and oats.

“We partner with General Mills, who's an obvious user of a lot of oats to the extent that General Mills moved their oat breeding program to Brookings, South Dakota, side by side with our oat breeder program. So we've got several years of a very effective public-private partnership with the private sector as well, meeting private sector organizations’ needs, but really driving value back to growers,” he said.

The university sells its oat varieties worldwide, including both domestically and internationally. The royalties from these oat sales support programs at South Dakota State University, furthering its mission. It benefits the people in the region and those who come for a land-grant university education.

Even the university’s decades-old research of low-till and no-till farming, crop rotation, and cover cropping continues to benefit ag producers today.

“That kind of approach to the cultivation of major crops, including corn, makes it possible to even contemplate something like corn or soybeans being a lower carbon intensity crop cultivated with the methodologies that enable pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and essentially sequestering it in the ground,” Scholl said. “South Dakota and North Dakota have quite an advantage over many other regions because of our geography combined with our cropping practices and much of that, a substantial proportion of that, came from low till, no till, crop rotation and cover cropping research and demonstration at South Dakota State.”

SDSU has a partnership with a capital investment firm, South Dakota Innovation Partners, which has helped to license a bioprocessing fermentation technology that transforms soybean meal from the normal extraction of soybean oil from the meal, and processes the soybean meal into a high-value, highly concentrated product, Scholl explained. That protein product is used for aquaculture diets, pet diets, livestock diets and even human diets and is sold globally.

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, a major public research institution, boasts multiple health schools and significant agricultural research, including soil, water and crop studies. It has developed notable products like the pacemaker, cancer therapies, biodegradable plastics and the retractable seat belt. The university receives over $1.4 billion annually in research expenditures, with $1 billion in awards, primarily from federal sources. Despite current federal grant uncertainties, research continues, especially in national security. The university is a significant startup creator, contributing to the economy through innovative research and industry partnerships. The university recently celebrated a milestone of helping create 25 startup companies in a single year based on university research.

JoonHyung Cho, assistant vice president for External Affairs and Communications in the university’s Research and Innovation office, said U of M is one of the few universities in the country that has all of the health schools on campus – medical, dental, public health, pharmacy, nursing and even a veterinarian medicine school. He said having all of those schools together creates a synergy and allows students and faculty to consider things in a holistic way.

The interconnectedness of research areas include soil and water studies to crop production, animal health, and human nutrition. The university’s research is very involved in solving real-world problems, often in collaboration with industry. These partnerships aim to create meaningful, impactful solutions, as demonstrated by innovations like pacemakers or open-heart surgery, with long-lasting benefits

“Sometimes we have a solution for almost anything in the world, but that doesn't mean it's a solution that can be commercialized,” he said. “Sometimes it's too extremely expensive to consumers, so then there's no market.”

This is why the U of M partners with global companies such as General Mills, Cargill and Boston Scientific – because the research being done at the university may provide solutions that the companies didn't know they had answers for. Students are also able to understand how their research training can be useful to the world, Cho explained.

One point of pride is the university’s apple program. Most of the apples in the United States can trace their genealogy back to the apple program at the U of M, Cho said. The Honeycrisp apple is one of the university’s best apples and is widely grown around the world. It was named the Minnesota State Fruit in 2006 and selected as one of the top 25 innovations in over a decade in the 2006 Better World Report.

Other examples of significant research impact include a K-12 National Science Foundation computer science education grant to serve rural and tribal communities, the Forever Green initiative to develop cover crops that can make farming more sustainable and profitable for producers, a major National Institute of Health grant for clinical and translational research, and UMN startup company Niron Magnetics, which is scaling up operations in Minnesota.