The Real Returns on Public Research Investments
New Ways to Measure Accurately the True Value of Federally Funded R&D
Jeffrey M. Alexander
Director, Innovation Policy
Center for Innovation and Applied Economics
RTI International
Sponsored by PSW Science Member Frederica Darema
About the Lecture
The US federal government spends over $170 billion per year supporting research and development (R&D). Proponents of government funding for scientific research face new challenges to show a positive “return on investment” (ROI) from that spending. There are multiple fallacies implicit in using ROI, a term from finance, to analyze the benefits from public research investments. A more comprehensive understanding of the value of the Federal government’s scientific research programs and institutions goes beyond simple quantitative metrics to capture more fully the longer-term benefits of publicly funded research to the nation.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is one science agency that historically enjoyed bipartisan support but recently has been called on to show why its operations are a good use of public tax dollars. Much of the attention focuses on its funding of external research organizations, totaling over $35 billion in fiscal year 2023. Less well publicized and understood is the substantial research conducted within the NIH’s own laboratories, which accounted for $8.5 billion in research spending that year. Conducted almost entirely on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the intramural research program supports federal scientists and postdoctoral scholars in pursuing fundamental biomedical research. When that research generates an invention with potentially useful applications, the NIH’s technology transfer offices work with the private sector and others to transform that knowledge into products and solutions that lengthen and improve the lives of residents of the US and the world.
NIH granted a team at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI International) access to internal NIH data on technology licenses, which the team then matched with public data to show how intramural research results improve the biomedical innovation system, the nation’s economy, and national and global health. The results suggest that the value of federal R&D transcends simple financial estimates. Together with emerging work in the field of the “science of science,” RTI and other institutions are generating evidence to accurately determine the true value of public research investments.
This lecture will discuss methods traditionally used to assess the impact and value of federally funded R&D and will describe better ways to accurately measure the true value of these investments.
Selected Reading & Media References
(1) Alexander, Jeffrey, and Rossana Zetina-Beale. “The Real Returns on NIH’s Intramural Research.” Issues in Science and Technology 41, no. 4 (Summer 2025): 36–39. https://doi.org/10.58875/YZSL6513
https://issues.org/nih-intramural-research-irp-real-numbers-alexander-zetina-beale/
(2) RTI International, Public Health & Economic Impact Study of NIH Technology Transfer Licensing: Final Project Report. Report prepared for MSC Guidehouse and NIH, December 2022. Available at https://www.techtransfer.nih.gov/reports/public-health-and-economic-impact-study
About the Speaker
Jeffrey M. Alexander is the Director of Innovation Policy in the Center for Innovation and Applied Economics at RTI International. Previously he was Senior Manager and before that Associate Director for Innovation Policy at RTI. In addition he is President of the Washington, DC Chapter of the Technology Transfer Society and is a member of the Steering Council of the Section on the Societal Impacts of Science and Technology of the AAAS.
Jeffrey’s research focuses on evaluating the efficacy and impact of public investments in science, technology, and innovation. He leads projects using advanced analytics and novel datasets to forecast emerging scientific fields and technologies. His work encompasses projects funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Defense and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, among others.
Jeffrey led assessments of major federal research and innovation programs, developed machine-learning and text-analytics approaches to classify research grant records, and applied big-data methods to R&D management and innovation policy. His policy work has informed the design of institutions for research commercialization and the assessment of regional innovation clusters.
Jeffrey is an author on numerous peer-reviewed publications and a number of book chapters and edited volumes. His article “Big Data and the Future of R&D Management” explored how analytics will shape innovation management, and he contributed to the volume “In pursuit of smart growth: Technology transfer theories, policies and practices”.
Among other honors and awards, he is a Non-Resident Fellow at New America, and a member of the Polaris Council.
Jeffrey earned a BA in International Relations at Stanford University, and a PhD in Management and Technology at The George Washington University School of Business.
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