Cornell University recently signed on as an official member of the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS), a consortium of America’s leading higher educational institutions focused on providing data to demonstrate the public value of sponsored scientific research.
With $1.07 billion in research funding, Cornell was in the top 10 in Reuters’ ranking of the World’s Most Innovative Universities in 2019. The University’s participation in IRIS will add significantly to the IRIS UMETRICS dataset, which represents approximately one-third of all federal research spending.
“We are very pleased to join the IRIS community and look forward to sharing our data and making use of the valuable data sets in the IRIS repository” said Emmanuel Giannelis, Cornell University Vice Provost for Research and Vice President for Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property and Research Policy. “Accurate data on the economic impact of research and the career paths of researchers are very challenging to acquire yet critical to designing effective strategies for increasing Cornell’s contribution to innovation and economic advancement in the U.S. and around the world. IRIS data is a unique and highly valuable resource for this purpose.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome Cornell into the IRIS family,” said IRIS Executive Director Jason Owen-Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. “Cornell’s role in the U.S. research community is very important, and its data on its research operations will be a hugely valuable addition to the IRIS UMETRICS dataset.”
The University’s membership also means that all researchers on campus will have no-cost access to the IRIS dataset, which illustrates the impact of funded research — including economic development and the career paths of faculty, students and employees.
IRIS will also supply Cornell with detailed reports on research spending, research vendors, and the employment and earnings of research-trained employees. IRIS reports are used to inform various stakeholders about the wide-ranging impacts of research investments.