Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series dealing with faculty research and budget cuts to Louisiana higher education.
 Each school year, countless University researchers compete for funds, but recent trends show federal funding applicants might benefit more from collaboration than competition.
While budget sequestration — a process that places limitations on the size of the federal budget — has played a major role in making sources of federal research funding less available, vice president for research and economic development and chemical engineering professor Kalliat Valsaraj said collaboration among various academic disciplines and institutions makes obtaining federal funds easier.
Valsaraj said, in recent years, federal sources of money for research projects have been shifting away from providing funds for single-discipline projects and moving toward increased funds for multi-institutional and multidisciplinary projects.
For fiscal year 2013-14, which ended in June, 58.2 percent of the University’s external funding for research came from federal sources. With 23.6 percent of the research money coming from the state and 18.2 percent from other sources, such as industry and private donation, federal funds make up the largest portion of the University’s external research funding.
“Federal money for simple, single projects are becoming more and more difficult, but as I said, if you combine your talents together with many universities and many disciplines, you can go after larger sums of money,” Valsaraj said.
In 2013, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities kicked off its “Close the Innovation Deficit” campaign, a coalition of organizations dedicated to promoting increases in federal funding for research and higher education. The University is one of APLU’s 238 member institutions.
The University’s main sources of federal research funds include agencies such as the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, National Institute of Health, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Valsaraj said.
On March 16, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, announced the American Innovation Act, a bill geared toward increasing investments in federal science agencies and programs.
The bill aims to provide a steady stream of increasing funds for basic scientific research over the next decade by maintaining 5 percent annual budget increases for the bill’s five designated federal research agencies: the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, Department of Defense Science and Technology Programs, National Institute of Standards and Technology Scientific and Technical Research and National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Directorate.
Valsaraj said many of the recent projects that have received federal funds focus on significant research ventures, such as finding a specific cure or developing sources of renewable energy.
“They’re all centered around some very important, what I would say, most pressing problems,” Valsaraj said.
In fall 2009, the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project, led by University associate biology professor Brent Christner, received almost $381,000 from the National Science Foundation. However, Christner didn’t do it alone. 
The WISSARD project consists of a team of researchers from institutions across the globe including the University of Venice in Italy, Montana State University, Northern Illinois University and Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom. Christners’ team of experts focus on subjects ranging from  microbiology and biogeochemistry to sedimentology and climate change.
In August 2014, the group published a paper in the scientific journal Nature documenting its discovery of microbial life 800 meters beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could provide insight into the possibility of life in other harsh environments, such as those on other planets. In a previous report by The Daily Reveille, College of Science Dean Cynthia Peterson said the potential budget cuts facing higher education could bring University hiring to a halt, which would have a negative impact on the University’s research
productivity.
However, to maintain its income of federal research money, the University must retain its faculty researchers, as well as continue to recruit. 
In a previous report by The Daily Reveille, College of Science Dean Cynthia Peterson said the potential budget cuts facing higher education could bring University hiring to a halt, which would have a negative impact on the University’s research productivity.
“LSU is a research university,” Peterson said. “A big part of our mission is research and that certainly is at risk if we have to take some draconian cuts that are projected. In order to bring in research dollars, we have to have faculty on the payroll doing the research and writing the grants.”