BROOKINGS — Researchers at SDSU have not been impacted by the new administration’s spending cuts. Daniel Scholl, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, said he’s not aware of any job losses at the university due to cuts in federal funding.

“At this moment we do not have a decrease in federal funding. That may change tomorrow,” Scholl said. “We are still waiting to receive concrete direction from our funding agencies. Our primary funding agencies are USDA, NIH and NSF.”

He said SDSU’s grants from those agencies remain in place.

“We know that the funding agencies are doing their work analyzing their priorities and the contracts or grants that they have in place,” Scholl said. “Up to this moment, we’ve been able to fully operate and fully continue. But they’re not done with their work, so we have yet to learn about some direct impacts on SDSU. It could be minor; it could be more substantive than minor. We don’t know yet, but we are continuing along our pathway of solving problems through innovative research. Our mission’s the same.”

He said approximately 40% of SDSU research is federally funded. The rest comes from the private sector, non-profits and state agencies.

“Our funding diversification is pretty healthy,” Scholl said. “Our faculty are really creative and will always seek creative ways to fund curiosity-driven, research-based solutions to problems. So we’ll continue on, and we’ll continue to pursue the lines of funding that we can — federal or otherwise.”

He said university officials are in regular contact with the state’s congressional delegation.

“We’re in really good, deep active conversation with them,” Scholl said. “There’s always advocacy in education going on so that our members in congress understand what the impacts will be here among their constituents.”

He said research at SDSU helps to benefit the entire region.

“For every $1 of research expenditure, there’s an estimate $1.50 of economic activity,” Scholl said. “Last year, our total research expenditures were $84 million … So if you apply the $1.50 worth of immediate economic stimulation, that goes to $120 million in economic activity that starts in Brookings and radiates out across the region — the state and the region beyond — just by the fact that we do research.”

Research expenditures at SDSU have grown from $52 million just 4 years ago, and Scholl said research from decades ago continues to bear rich fruit.

“SDSU in the 1980s demonstrated that fuel ethanol can be fermented from corn at-scale,” he said. “That was back in the 1980s, and that was part of the input that organizations like POET took and scaled-up the production of and commercialized. So early SDSU research fed into the current ethanol industry, and that has a huge economic impact in South Dakota and the region.”

He said ongoing research continues to benefit producers.

“What follows naturally from that is thinking — what else can you make from the co-products of ethanol production?” Scholl said. “Dried distillers grains are one of the things that’s left over when ethanol is produced commercially. We actually have work going on in partnerships using bioprocessing or fermentation to produce other useful products from those ethanol co-products. That’s like a third stage of value added to corn.”

He said researchers do the same with other crops.

“Another example is on the soybean side,” Scholl said. “(There is) SDSU technology that Houdek in Volga is using to ferment soybean meal off the South Dakota Soybean Processors plant into high-value protein nutritional products for a variety of different uses. That’s based on SDSU research that was spun-off into a startup company that now has grown to be the $100 million production facility that’s in Volga and sells products globally.”

He said the POET Bioproducts Center at the research park is a prime example of university-sourced innovation benefitting the region.

“That is emblematic of a very conscious decision SDSU made several years ago to be a leader in innovating new ways to make bio-based products from commodity feed stocks,” Scholl said. “It’s a value added to the commodities — corn, soybeans, etc. — that we produce in abundance in South Dakota … That will be ongoing for years and years and years. It’s very long term.”

He said economic development flows naturally from education.

“Economic development — and also just a flourishing society — depends on well-educated, creative people,” Scholl said. “Education and innovation are the two things that we build future progress on. New ideas, new solutions and people who can continue to create new solutions — that’s what we produce with our students.”

In spite of ongoing federal cuts, Scholl said the long-term future for SDSU remains strong.

“Brookings has a bright future as a knowledge industry hub or an agriculture technology hub — driven in part by the innovative research and commercialization of research coming out of SDSU,” he said. “We’ve got challenges right now, but these are in the immediate term. Our long-term goals persist. I think you’ll see our trajectory of research growth continue. There’ll be fits and spurts of course — and what’s going on federally might be one of those modest setbacks upon which we build future growth — but I can readily see over ten years’ time our research expenditures being 50% or more higher than they are now.”

Contact Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.