SMU, UTSW receive coveted top research university status

In a bright engineering lab, SMU graduate student Zeyu Deng flexed his fingers above a small sensor. A white robotic arm, no more than 3 feet tall, mimicked his gestures — widening its two metal prongs, shutting its own “hand” and, eventually, flicking a control switch.
The collaborative robot, or cobot, is just one of many research projects in the 5,000-square-foot center as students and faculty explore how humans and machines can better work together, which could shape the future of manufacturing.
The center, lined with industry-related labs, reflects millions of dollars Southern Methodist University has poured into bolstering research. It’s an investment that has paid off as officials announced Thursday that it reached the coveted R1 status, a classification given to the nation’s top research institutions.
That’s a critical step in raising the school’s profile nationally to attract more top-tier students and faculty — and, in turn, more research dollars — to the Dallas campus.
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“Road to R1 was our mantra,” said Suku Nair, SMU’s vice provost for research and chief innovation officer.
An overhaul by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to its classification system meant more schools — including medical institutions — could qualify for R1 status this year.
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The American Council on Education, or ACE, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching revamped how it classifies schools to more accurately reflect work on campuses and to minimize the unwarranted competition between schools, officials said.
Most notably, R1 status was previously determined on a sliding scale with 10 metrics and capped at a certain number each year. The new system has a clear threshold that requires schools to have reached at least $50 million in research spending and award 70 research doctorates annually.
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“Before these updates, it was not clear what was required for institutions to earn a research designation,” Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classification systems and senior vice president at ACE, said in a statement. “This confusion created distractions and unproductive competition between colleges and universities.”
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Some medical centers could not qualify under the previous criteria despite hitting key benchmarks, such as hundreds of millions of dollars in research each year, because of the complex grading in the previous system.
Now, UT Southwestern Medical Center joins the Baylor College of Medicine as well as the University of Texas System’s health science centers in Houston and San Antonio in receiving the status, according to Carnegie.
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That brings Texas’ total of R1 schools to 16, including the University of North Texas and the UT schools in Arlington and Dallas, which previously achieved the status. Texas had only three universities reaching that designation in 2008.
With Dallas being one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country, the area needs robust research universities to be a driving force in attracting industry and spurring innovation, Nair said. [SMU is a supporter of the Education Lab.]
“When we talk to industry, we explain to them we want to be their research bench,” Nair said. “They can come to a university where they can get highly-skilled faculty working with PhD students.”
Among the university’s focus areas are projects on high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, data science, cyber security and biological sciences.
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Investments in those areas topped more than $125 million over the last 15 years, Nair said.
Zeyu Deng, a computer science PhD student at SMU, uses a motion sensor to train and control a robotic arm. The millions of dollars SMU poured into bolstering research paid off Thursday, when the school obtained R1 status given to top research universities. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)
One of the most significant was the O’Donnell Data Science and Research Computing Institute.
Founded in 2020, the institute invested $11.5 million in NVIDIA’s high-performing computer cluster to allow students and faculty to conduct research in machine learning and artificial intelligence at a fast pace.
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NVIDIA is the world’s leading company producing AI technology. Very few universities have access to the NVIDIA computer cluster, Nair noted.
In 2021, SMU launched a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign with the largest portion — $600 million — to bolster research through new programs, facilities and equipment.
The following year, the school announced it was moving its biotech research to the Pegasus Park hub, a 23-acre development that houses biotech firms and nonprofit groups.
The school’s new Center for Digital and Human-Augmented Manufacturing, where Deng worked with the robot, partners with manufacturing companies. Officials hope the R1 designation will drive more companies to partner with the school after seeing the “stamp of approval” on quality research.
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“We want to be a bit more innovative, leveraging our advantages,” said Adel Alaeddini, the executive director of research innovation at the center. “Here we are trying to create a triangle between students, the industry and the faculty.”
In the 2022-23 academic year, SMU graduated 139 doctoral students. The three-year spending average for the school was $53 million, according to the system’s review of 2021 to 2023.
SMU’s goal is to go beyond the minimum criteria, Nair said. “We definitely want to double our research expenditure in the next five years.”
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With various federal research grant funds in limbo as President Donald Trump’s administration reviews spending, SMU officials said they are in frequent contact with the area’s congressional delegation to ensure the university doesn’t lose momentum.
“I do believe these are all going to be temporary. Things are going to stabilize,” Nair said. “When we talk to our congressional delegation, they confirm university research has a major role in national innovation.”
Meanwhile, the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth was among 10 schools in the state receiving a new classification in the system — Research Colleges and Universities.
That moniker, given to 218 schools nationally, is for institutions that historically weren’t recognized for research activity, including institutions that do not offer many or any doctoral degrees, and spend more than $2.5 million annually.
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