The University of Otago is concerned after a ''significant'' $11.5 million drop in Health Research Council (HRC) funding compared with last year.
Otago University picked up $15.5 million of more than $58 million in funding allocated in this year's round, which was 42.6% lower than the $27 million last year and its lowest amount in the past five annual rounds.
The drop in HRC funding continues a trend at the university this year. Performance-based research funding was $1.77 million down on expectations and external funding for research $1.58 million less than predicted. Deputy vice-chancellor, research and enterprise, Prof Richard Blaikie said the drop in HRC funding was a concern, ''because that is a significant drop''.
Asked if the university needed to work harder to get funding next year he said: ''I wouldn't like to say that, because people work extremely hard. We weren't as successful as we would have hoped, but we have got to look at ways of improving that performance.''
The impact the drop in funding would have on research at the university was yet to be determined and would become apparent only after analysis on the funding round was carried out, Prof Blaikie said.
It was ''difficult'' to predict how much funding the university would get through the ''very competitive'' HRC. Each application had, on average, a 10% success rate, he said.
