USF reports $531M in research activity for 2025, 15% climb over two years

The University of South Florida reported $531 million in research activity for the 2025 fiscal year — a 15% increase over the past two years.

Those numbers were reported to the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey, which is the federal government’s main benchmark for measuring research activity at universities nationwide. 

“The research environment is incredibly competitive and undergoing a dramatic reset,” USF President Moez Limayem says in a release. “Sustained growth like this does not happen by accident. It reflects the reputation of USF’s scholars who push the boundaries of discovery.” 

In the most recent HERD rankings, USF ranked No. 47 among U.S. public universities for research expenditures and No. 2 in Florida, the release says. Those rankings are based on USF’s $522 million in research activity for fiscal year 2024, up from $461 million in 2023. 

Last November, USF reported a record-breaking $750 million in total research grants awarded for the 2025 fiscal year. The next HERD ranking, which will reflect these numbers, will be released later this year. 

As in previous years, a majority of the university’s research spending continues to come from competitive federal awards from agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, the release says. 

USF has also seen an increase in private-sector support. Expenditures from corporate sponsors increased 25% to $18 million last year. That surge in funding was largely driven by an increase in clinical research for diseases including Type 1 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. Some of the top corporate sponsors to fund USF’s research were pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Novo Nordisk, Abbott Diabetes Care and biotech company Genetech.