UW-Madison has surpassed all other public universities to become the largest receiver of federal funding for research, authorities said Tuesday.

The figures, taken from the 1999-2000 school year, show that UW spent $554 million, second only to Johns Hopkins University.

During the last three years, the federal government has increased its support of UW-Madison research by $117 million, or 48 percent.

Martin Cadwallader, interim dean of the Graduate School, will present a report to the Board of Regents Thursday crediting UW with attracting federal research support.

“We are very excited that we are a leader in this important measure of research abilities,” he said. “It is a compliment to our faculty, academic staff and students that they are able to attract this level of research funding.”

Thirty-one percent of the funding went to the Medical School. UW has always held a high rank in regards to federal funding, Paul Deluca, associate dean of the medical school, said.

“This isn’t surprising,” Deluca said. “We’ve always been two, three or four [in ranking]. It’s just that people haven’t heard about it before.”

Deluca said the medical school uses the money for a variety of projects, including AIDS research, molecular imaging and glaucoma research.

The University of Michigan trailed UW, spending $552 million. Johns Hopkins vastly surpassed all public schools, with a sum of $901 million. Authorities said the differences are a result of classified federal research projects that UW is not eligible for.

“We’re never going to beat Johns Hopkins because they take defense money and we don’t,” Deluca said.

So far, UW has been on track to spend even more research money in 2002. As of January, researchers have an overall increase of $15 million compared with last year.

Cadwallader said the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation are to thank for the expenditures. The NIH and the NSF are two federal agencies that provide an increasing bulk of UW’s federal research grants.

“The NIH and NSF are scheduled to receive 15 and 9 percent budget increases, respectively,” Cadwallader said. “With an increased pool of available funding, we hope to see another substantial increase in research awards this year.”