Fiscal Year 2021
Brown University Financial Report

Grants and Awards

Grants and Awards

Brown has seen an acceleration in research expenditures in the computational and data sciences, an area in which the University is building its academic strength.

The list below represents just a small sampling of some of the grants, awards and fellowships of significant impact received across the computational and data sciences at Brown University from FY16 to FY21. The funds support faculty and research programs using science and technology to improve lives in an increasingly data-driven world.

Excellence Fueled by Funded Research

  • $1.5M to Applied Mathematics from the National Science Foundation’s Transdisciplinary Research in Principles Of Data Science program for studying foundations of model-driven discovery from massive data
  • $23.7M to the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) from the National Science Foundation to re-fund the institute for a further five years
  • $10.8M to renew the Center for Computational Biology of Human Disease from NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences for advancing new discoveries, algorithms and genomic screening approaches with direct relevance to several human diseases
  • $4.5M to Computer Science from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for machine learning and AI
  • $6.1M to Computer Science from Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity for building better computational models of natural language
  • $3.7M to Computer Science from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for design and analysis of the complex software systems that operate in the world wide web
  • $1.9M to Computer Science from the Office of Naval Research for developing skills of humanoid robots in complex unstructured environments
  • $790,000 combined to the Costs of War Project from the Colombe Peace Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Fund for Constitutional Government, No One Left Behind, and Carnegie Corporation of New York for studying estimates of the human and financial costs of America’s wars
  • $1.3M to the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health for reframing firearm injury prevention through bystander interventions
  • $880,000 to Economics from Arnold Ventures for home visiting in Rhode Island and separate “COVID-Explained” website development
  • $1.8M to Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences from the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health to train postdoctoral fellows in computational psychiatry
  • $1.9M to Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences from the Office of Naval Research to understand visual reasoning through AI/machine learning models 
  • $3.1M to Physics from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for an international multi-institutional project on the design and implementation of the sensor upgrade for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)
  • $446,000 to Physics from the National Science Foundation for an internationally collaborative project to observe the early universe using the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope
  • $1.2M to the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society from the National Science Foundation to lead an international collaboration exploring how converging geophysical and socioeconomic pressures shape arctic development between now and 2050
  • $6.3M to Engineering from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the design, development, and implementation of novel neural interfaces for functional applications to neuromotor diseases
  • $9.6M to the Carney Institute for Brain Science from the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences to renew the COBRE Center for Central Nervous System Function
  • $743,000 to the Center for Statistical Sciences from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for studying missing data when transporting treatment effects from clinical trials to a target population
  • $1.4M combined to Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences from the Office of Naval Research for high-resolution modeling of oceans and climate phenomenon such as seasonal monsoons
  • $4.6M to The Policy Lab from Arnold Ventures for operations and administration
  • $6.2M combined to Economics from Arnold Ventures, the JPB Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation for the American Opportunity Study

Faculty Earn Prominent Awards

Brown faculty continue to earn prestigious awards for career scientists. The following faculty won awards in the computational and data sciences:

  • $875,000 to Lorin Crawford, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, from the David and Lucille Packard Fellowship for computational methods that enhance our understanding about the regulatory mechanisms underlying disease
  • Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers to Sohini Ramachandran, Professor of Biology and Computer Science, Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology, and Director of Data Science, from the White House
  • $625,000 MacArthur Fellow “genius grant” to Jesse Shapiro, Professor of Political Economy, from the MacArthur Foundation