Notre Dame has built a recognized research enterprise—outpacing its peers in research expenditures by 160 percent since 1990 and achieving all-time University highs in research awards.

The University is a vibrant ecosystem of scholars, and it shines brightly through research that combines expertise from all disciplines to make advancements in scholarship and creative endeavor. Modern advancements are made through collaboration and multifaceted input, and that’s a hallmark of research at Notre Dame.

Research at Notre Dame is a mechanical engineer using robots to help people with spinal cord injuries to walk again. It’s a political scientist and a legal scholar helping to broker a peace deal in the war-torn nation of Colombia, and then helping to implement it. It’s a group of astrophysicists traveling a mile beneath the Earth’s surface to try to replicate the reactions that create stars. It’s an institute that brings together artists, musicians, and scientists to explore questions of how we should live in the world. It’s preserving UNESCO World Heritage sites and bringing lessons from the past to bear on our present and future. It’s using cutting-edge technology to ensure some of the world’s most cherished buildings are here for future generations.

Research Inline

Today’s researchers at Notre Dame stand on the shoulders of others who have made landmark discoveries here. Long before the modern smartphone, the first wireless transmission in the US was sent from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to Saint Mary’s College about a mile away. Before the ubiquity of products made from synthetic rubber was possible, the substance’s formulae were developed here. Before the Wright brothers made their historic venture at Kitty Hawk, the principles of flight were being tested and refined at Notre Dame.

Research at Notre Dame is an endeavor that reaches into every corner and level of the institution, and is mutually supportive of our mission as a Catholic university. We seek discoveries that are significant because of the achievement they represent in a given academic field, but also because they yield benefits for the common good.

Notre Dame Research

Notre Dame Research exists to equip University faculty and students with the tools they need to create knowledge. It provides the administrative support framework for research grants, as well as training and oversight of the University’s core research facilities.

Notre Dame Research

A bearded man wearing safety goggles looking through a microscope

Research

Notre Dame selected to join Association of American Universities

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A student measuring the reflectance of a leaf using a field spectrometer.

Research

A picture of drought

ND ecologist matching NASA images with field data to measure forest health

Close up image of a lot of microchips, showing the detail of the etched leprechaun.

Research

The Chip Makers

Each year, a group of Notre Dame students receives a massive—though tiny—challenge: Build a semiconductor chip inside Notre Dame’s nanofabrication facility