As a public land-grant university, the University of Wyoming (UW) is mandated to conduct advanced research and outreach across the state. UW’s research and economic development division is largely in charge of that. The vice president is Parag Chitnis. He joined Wyoming Public Media to talk about the division’s recent growth, why it matters and how Wyoming politics and culture may be impacting the mission.
Editor’s Note: Wyoming Public Media falls under the University of Wyoming’s Research and Economic Development Division. No one from the division or UW reviewed the content of this interview prior to publication.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Kamila Kudelska: Let’s start with the growth of the Research and Economic Development Division in the last couple of years. The amount of money that was spent on research at UW – in 2025, that number was $193 million. What does that number mean?
Parag Chitnis: University of Wyoming has seen a lot of research growth in the last four years. In 2021, we were in about some $90 million dollars in research expenditures. Now it's $193 million in 2025. What it means is the university is bringing in money from outside to spend on research in much larger amounts now than what was in the past. This research is impacting not just the discovery part, but also involving our students solving problems that are relevant to Wyoming, and thus it is impacting the lives of people in Wyoming in ways that will be tangible in the next few years.
KK: Has recent federal policy impacted this? I'm thinking of the potential cap on indirect cost on research grants and budget cuts proposed to federal funders.
PC: The proposed budget cuts and proposed indirect costs limits have not yet [been] realized. But what it has impacted is overall uncertainty around what kind of opportunities will be provided in the future. That certainly increases stress on our faculty and on our students, because they don't know if those opportunities will exist in the future.
KK: After these students graduate, are they looking at specific types of jobs? Are they based in Wyoming?
PC: It depends on what area. The areas where we have a lot of research activities are very relevant to Wyoming: Energy is a big one. Agriculture, wildlife biology is another area which is really strong in Wyoming. So those are the areas which are very relevant. Those are the areas we are emphasizing and promoting and stimulating on campus. Those students are likely to find jobs in Wyoming, because those businesses and those jobs are here in Wyoming.
KK: During this past legislative session, funding for the Wyoming Business Council was threatened. Lawmakers claimed it wasn't really helping the economy as it was meant to. You work with the Business Council [and] with the state to try to get students in the state to start their own businesses [or] translate research to businesses. How is this pushback affecting what you're trying to do?
PC: There are a couple of programs we have that are in collaboration with the Wyoming Business Council (WBC). One of them is the Small Business Development Centers Network. This center receives some funding from SBA [the Small Business Administration], a federal agency, and Wyoming Business Council. [It] provide[s] services to small businesses across the state, whether this is a newly open pizza shop or an accounting firm or a really high tech company.
The other one we have is called Manufacturing Works, which is a manufacturing extension partnership program with NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology], another agency in federal government. Funds for that is also coming from WBC.
Fortunately, I think many of the legislators were aware of these programs because they were impacting their communities, because there are small businesses and small- and medium-sized manufacturers across the state, and these two programs work with them closely. So despite what they were saying about the Wyoming Business Council, they had support of this when they kind of found out the Wyoming Business Council is involved in supporting these programs.
KK: But they did only get funded for one year. Are you worried about that potentially showing some kind of signal to students, that maybe they're not welcome to start a business here, maybe it's not promising to start a business here?
PC: Even though their core funding got funded for one year, the exception funding, additional money that was requested for them, did get funded. So it's very promising. I think in the next cycle they will get supported for the second year at this higher level.
There are several programs at the university that are also supporting startups and businesses. All of these different components of our entrepreneurship system are already here. So I'm not worried about whether students will get negative impression when they're on campus. They see all of these things really supporting them.
KK: This month, your division organized the first Research and Discovery Days, expanding from a research week, as I understand. Tell me about that.
PC: This was to highlight all the excellence we have on campus. We had some of the notable events, including on Saturday, about 200 undergraduate students presented their work research projects on the campus. The students who have been working on these projects all along, and the products of that research we have, were presented on Monday. In parallel to that, we had another symposium looking at how humanities can help AI development, how a human perspective can really bring context to the development and interpretations in AI.
KK: Can you give me one or two concrete examples from these days that show the role of UW research in the state's economy?
PC: For example, some of those research translation projects we have, they are already working with some of the state's industries. One of them is working with using their technology to look at how can we separate critical minerals in a different way. Others are working in developing some medical tools or diagnostic assays or tools to look at air quality, and those types of translational projects are likely to lead to small businesses, startups that will help the state's economy.
