WA unis receive $27m in govt grants

The University of Western Australia has snared the lion's share of federal government grants awarded to the state's universities as WA received a collective $27 million for research projects.

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, today revealed the recipients of two federal government grants programs; the Discovery Projects scheme and the Linkage Projects scheme.

Both schemes are managed by the Australian Research Council.

Under the Discovery Projects scheme, a total of $325.5 million was awarded to 925 research projects across the country, with WA receiving $21.6 million, or 6.4 per cent.

UWA received the bulk of the state's grants with $16.1 million for 41 projects while Curtin University received $3.7 million for 12 projects and Murdoch University received $1.85 million for six projects.

Discovery Project applications from UWA researchers had a higher success rate with 27.2 per cent than the national average of 22.7 per cent, UWA claims.

UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Alan Robson said the fact that UWA researchers were more successful than most in attracting funding was an indication of the high-quality work being undertaken at the University.

"This funding will ensure that many high-quality research projects with the potential to benefit the entire community will be undertaken at UWA," Professor Robson said.

Research institutes in New South Wales received the bulk of the funds with $110.5 million awarded in grants, followed by Victoria ($85.3 million), Queensland ($50.2 million) and the Australian Capital Territory ($36.4 million).

Under the Linkage Projects program, WA received a total of $5.4 million, with UWA again being awarded the bulk of that with almost $3.4 million of funding for eight projects.

The program is designed to bring together research institutions and industry.

A total of $66.8 million was awarded to 211 linkage projects across the country, with private and non-profit organisations providing an additional $121.3 million in cash and in-kind contributions.

NSW again snared the bulk of the Linkage Projects funding, with the state's research institutes receiving $21.8 million while Queensland received $11.6 million and Victoria with $18.4 million.