Complex Network Analysis of Research Funding: A Case Study of NSF Grants

Funding from the government agencies has been the driving force for the research and educational institutions particularly in the United States. The government funds billions of dollars every year to lead research initiatives that will shape the future. In this paper, we analyze the funds distributed by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), a major source of academic research funding, to understand the collaboration patterns among researchers and institutions. Using complex network analysis, we interpret the collaboration patterns at researcher, institution, and state levels by constructing the corresponding networks based on the number of grants collaborated at different time frames. Additionally, we analyze these networks for small, medium, and large projects in order to observe collaboration at different funding levels. We further analyze the directorates to identify the differences in collaboration trends between disciplines. Sample networks can be found at http://www.cse.unr.edu/∼mgunes/ NSFCollaborationNetworks/.