A team of our researchers used advanced tools they have developed over the last eight years to shed light on how $4 billion in federal funding helped scientists understand the COVID-19 virus, develop new treatments and deploy lifesaving vaccines in unprecedented time.
“This work is the first to shed light on how billions of federal money was used to study and combat the COVID-19 pandemic,” noted researcher Ani Chandrabhatla. “The framework and software we developed to study NIH funding helped us understand where and how funding was deployed and, even more, what topics researchers were studying with that funding.”
The researchers analyzed more than 14,600 scientific publications funded by more than 2,400 federal grants awarded between January 2020 and December 2021. Their machine-learning model determined that the top three research topics were clinical trials and outcomes research (8.5% of papers), coronavirus-related heart and lung damage (7.3%) and COVID-19 transmission/epidemiology (7.2%).
Five states received roughly half of the $4 billion in emergency COVID-19 funding: North Carolina, Washington, New York, California and Massachusetts.