The National Institutes of Health awarded $19.297 billion to 145 medical schools in fiscal 2025, according to data published by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.
The fiscal 2025 funding was only slightly higher than fiscal 2024, which saw 148 medical schools receive $19.193 billion in funding.
The University of California San Francisco maintained the top spot on the list, receiving about $724 million in fiscal 2025 after receiving $726 million in fiscal 2024.
Research funding has been under scrutiny in recent years, with calls from the Trump administration to cap federal reimbursement of indirect research costs at 15%. Twenty-two states, led by attorneys general in Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan, sued the NIH, claiming the cap would violate federal law.
A federal appeals court officially blocked the 15% cap in January, asserting it would violate both congressional appropriations law and the NIH’s own grant regulations.
Only two of the 145 medical schools that received research funding from the NIH in fiscal 2025 reported indirect costs under 15%.
Here are the 25 medical schools that received the most funding for medical research in 2025 and the proportion of that funding that went to indirect costs:
| Rank | Name | Total award | Indirect cost proportion |
| 1 | University of California San Francisco | $724,156,263 | 28.1% |
| 2 | Washington University in St. Louis | $675,188,873 | 27.1% |
| 3 | University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) | $622,537,289 | 29.9% |
| 4 | Yale University (New Haven, Conn.) | $580,818,286 | 30.9% |
| 5 | Stanford (Calif.) University | $573,897,714 | 28.8% |
| 6 | Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) | $565,329,366 | 28.2% |
| 7 | Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.) | $564,267,623 | 26.1% |
| 8 | University of Pittsburgh | $555,351,237 | 28.5% |
| 9 | Duke University (Durham, N.C.) | $514,509,019 | 28.9% |
| 10 | University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) | $507,840,724 | 27.7% |
| 11 | Columbia University Health Sciences (New York City) | $503,370,873 | 30.2% |
| 12 | Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine (New York City) | $475,493,118 | 31.5% |
| 13 | New York University School of Medicine (New York City) | $437,996,810 | 31.9% |
| 14 | University of California San Diego | $426,788,846 | 28.7% |
| 15 | University of California Los Angeles | $409,204,228 | 23.4% |
| 16 | Emory University (Atlanta) | $385,377,125 | 28.2% |
| 17 | Northwestern University (Chicago) | $384,786,250 | 29.5% |
| 18 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (N.C.) | $353,001,816 | 26.2% |
| 19 | University of Washington (Seattle) | $343,488,816 | 27.9% |
| 20 | Cornell University Weill Medical College (New York City) | $316,504,584 | 29.6% |
| 21 | University of Colorado (Denver) | $313,765,918 | 26.3% |
| 22 | University of Texas Southwestern (Dallas) | $311,083,313 | 33% |
| 23 | Baylor College of Medicine (Houston) | $302,914,011 | 29.7% |
| 24 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | $297,229,323 | 28.7% |
| 25 | University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) | $293,487,541 | 28.5% |
