NASA gives UI school’s largest grant ever
Lang
6/23/19
NASA has given University of Iowa researchers the largest grant in the school’s history.
A team led by UI physicist Craig Kletzing won $115 million from NASA to study the mysterious, powerful interactions between the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth.
The contract award is the single largest externally funded research project in UI history. Out of more than 35,000 projects awarded to the UI since 1965, Kletzing’s contract is the only research award of more than $100 million.
Kletzing’s project, called Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS), is part of a larger initiative, NASA’s Explorers Program, which is studying how the sun affects space and the space environment around planets.
The funding amount is subject to change, as it does not include ride share costs.
The largest previous grant to the UI was in 1971, when Francois Abboud, Founding Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, won an $88.5 million grant to study a wide array of diseases and illnesses, including anxiety, hypertension, and vascular damage.