BATON ROUGE — LSU's flagship campuses have surpassed $600 million in annual research activity, marking the fifth consecutive year of record-breaking research, the university announced Wednesday. 

The flagship campuses are LSU A&M, the LSU AgCenter, LSU Health New Orleans and LSU Health Shreveport. 

Collectively, LSU said they reported $601 million in research expenditures for fiscal year 2024-2025, an 11 percent increase from the previous year.

"We are incredibly proud of our Flagship faculty's commitment to excellence, but we aren't slowing down," Chancellor Jim Dalton said. "This type of sustained success is exactly how we will reach our goal of being among the top 50 research universities in the nation."

At LSU and Tulane University, researchers were awarded $22 million by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2023 to lead a consortium focused on the Lower Mississippi River Delta. 

The LSU AgCenter has received significant funding for invasive species research in recent years, leading to the launch of both an Invasive Species Consortium and a Center of Research Excellence. 

LSU also said that since 2018, it has led the Gulf South Clinical Trials Network, part of the National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program, to expand access to clinical trials for people served by community hospitals throughout Louisiana and Southern Mississippi. The network spans LSU Health New Orleans and LSU Health Shreveport, as well as Ochsner Health and Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center.

Pennington Biomedical researchers are also collaborating with LSU Health New Orleans on a national study called Nutrition for Precision Health, which goes into genetics, metabolism, physiology and behavior, LSU said.