Excellence at Ohio State

Ever Wonder?

Ever wonder if someone could make a safe, designer medicine just for our loved ones? Our scientists in drug discovery are on it, working each day to improve and save lives.

Ever wonder what manufacturing in space might mean for manufacturing on Earth? Ohio State’s Starlab project is working to not only answer the question but also apply it to our state’s and nation’s workforce.

Ever wonder what urban transportation without traffic jams looks like? The Transportation Research Center is finding ways to ensure we can spend less time on the highway and more time with our families.

Ever wonder about the speed of an electron? Or how to measure it? We have, and we won a Nobel Prize for it. The discovery has the potential to change the way our many devices and machines operate.

If you’ve wondered about it, chances are we’re on it. We’re applying excellence at scale — to benefit Ohioans, our nation and the world.

Keep wondering — and we will, too.

For Ohioans

From teaching and learning, to research and innovation, to health care, agriculture, the arts and more, the work of Ohio State students, faculty and staff is improving lives and strengthening communities every day, in all 88 counties.

Academic excellence

Today at Ohio State, 14,000 researchers conduct $1.6 billion in research each year, including $775 million in federal funding. The university’s research and development expenditures have increased more than $600 million over the past four years.

Ohio State is a top 15 research university, ranking ahead of esteemed research programs at Harvard, Yale and Georgia Institute of Technology, and just behind Stanford, Cornell and Duke. Great numbers, but what do they mean to Ohioans and the nation?

Distinguished University Professor Judit Puskas in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences helped invent a material used in coronary stents — a life-saving technology that has been implanted in more than 10 million surgery patients the world over.

Emeritus Professor Pierre Agostini was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the creation of techniques to capture electrons using pulses of light. Each pulse lasts just an attosecond, or one quintillionth of a second — the applications of which range from sweeping changes in microelectronics to how cars and big machinery operates.

Over 25 years, some 4,000 experiments have been conducted aboard the International Space Station — all designed to improve life on Earth. Scientist John M. Horack helped build hardware and experiments as part of that remarkable spaceflight community — and sees the next chapter in space being shaped by collaboration and commercial opportunity.

Ohio State’s history as a research powerhouse effecting real-world change is long and varied — from the now ubiquitous Slow Moving Vehicle symbol (introduced in the early 1960s in response to a study of fatal tractor accidents) to a vaccine for feline leukemia (preventing, for the first time in the 1980s, a fatal disease in cats) and many more before, after and in between.

Investing in ourselves as never before

Ohio State’s strategic plan, named for the university’s motto, calls for a $100 million investment to attract and retain eminent faculty to Ohio State. The investment in talent and culture will help grow the university’s research enterprise to $2 billion.

The commitment to faculty will also support a comprehensive embrace of artificial intelligence in research and teaching and learning — the first of its kind nationally. Ohio State’s AI Fluency initiative will ensure that every Ohio State graduate is AI fluent. And the new AI^(X) Hub will help accelerate discoveries across all disciplines.

President Carter set a goal of doubling undergraduate enrollment in nursing and a goal to expand enrollment in veterinary medicine to 200 students — each designed to meet an urgent workforce need in Ohio. 

A 38-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, President Carter also set a goal for Ohio State to become the No. 1 university for veterans.

World-class clinical care

The Wexner Medical Center is committed to creating a healthier Ohio. Ohio State is one of the only leading public research institutions with a top-ranked academic medical center located on the same campus as our seven Health Sciences colleges.

The Comprehensive Transplant Center has performed 13,600 solid organ transplants since 1967, a milestone achieved by fewer than 8% of all U.S. transplant centers. In December 2024, Ohio State performed one of the nation's largest single-institution living kidney donor exchanges. This miraculous chain of surgeries was orchestrated over two days, giving 10 kidney recipients a new lease on life.

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute is the only cancer program in the U.S. that features a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center aligned with a nationally ranked academic medical center and a freestanding cancer hospital on the campus of one of the nation's largest public universities. More than 1,500 researchers are advancing health for all Ohioans through discoveries in immunotherapy, drug discovery and many more.

Dr. Glen Barber is a globally renowned virologist and immunologist whose lab studies the body’s natural defenses against harmful microbes and finds the origins of infectious, inflammatory and cancer-associated diseases. He is one of 22 researchers worldwide selected as a Citation Laureate, many of which have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

More than 50 million people in the U.S. have a neurological disorder. Dr. Sheital Bavishi started Ohio’s first program offering intensive therapy to awaken patients from comas after severe brain injuries. Now, over half of patients at the Wexner Medical Center who are treated for a brain injury that left them unresponsive or minimally responsive have regained consciousness.

The College of Dentistry serves Ohioans at 30 extramural sites, including two H.O.M.E. (Health Outreach Mobile Experience) Treatment Coaches that provide care to children at 15 to 20 Columbus City Schools and are soon to provide care to children in rural areas of the state.

Nearly 20% of Americans live in rural areas, but only 10% of physicians practice there. The Community Medicine MD Track, a program of Ohio State’s College of Medicine, prepares graduates for future careers in rural and small community medicine.

Student success

• The President’s Scholars Program provides full cost of attendance to Ohio students who score a perfect 36 on the ACT or a perfect 1600 on the SAT.
• The Regional Campus Commitment covers tuition and fees for students from families with an income of $100,000 or lower who start at one of Ohio State’s regional campuses before transferring to the Columbus campus — or complete a four-year degree at a regional campus.
• Buckeye Bridge, a 4-year degree completion program partnership with Columbus State Community College, provides students with a tuition-free path to finish their bachelor’s degrees at Ohio State.