Gonzaga, Washington State University receive combined $3 million in federal grants

Universities in Washington will get a boost from the package of spending bills the U.S. Senate passed on Thursday.

The schools will receive a little more than $7 million to advance educational and research opportunities from five grants included in the legislation after Sen. Maria Cantwell requested the funding.

The three-bill package, which funds the departments of Interior, Commerce, Energy and Justice, along with federal science programs, was advanced to President Donald Trump for his signature after the House approved the legislation with similar bipartisan support last week.

Cantwell requested the grant funding as part of an earmark process that allows each member of Congress to request congressionally directed spending for their state, legislation that is negotiated on the Senate side by Sen. Patty Murray in her capacity as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Washington State University was awarded $2 million for new equipment for the school’s Institute of Materials Research and its efforts to cultivate high quality semiconductor crystals. The equipment paid for by the legislation package will provide a unique edge in the complicated research to advance chips used across a variety of industries, including defense, energy and medicine.

“WSU is unique in maintaining a 30-year sustained academic capability to grow high-purity, custom semiconductor crystals and prepare research-grade wafers in-house – expertise that exists at very few U.S. universities and is increasingly unavailable domestically,” Cantwell said in a written statement. “This $2 million investment will provide new equipment for crystal growth at the Institute of Materials Research, enabling WSU to continue training the next generation of crystal growers to fill vital positions and strengthen this critical domestic supply chain.”

Murray secured $50 million in funding for the university to advance aquatic wildlife research – the largest, direct-to-institution, higher education-related sum provided in the legislation package statewide. Most of the funding will be used to establish a new Pacific Salmon Resiliency Research and Training Center and to renovate the school’s existing Aquatic Phenomics Research Center and Aquatic Pathobiology Laboratory in Pullman, according to a release from the senator’s office.

The funding package also included $1 million in grant funding for Gonzaga University’s Center for Materials Research, which was established in 2023 as the university led a large consortium in an effort to establish the region as an aerospace manufacturing center. The broader tech hub effort received $48 million in grant funding under the Biden administration, but the Trump administration rescinded the investment last May.

Another application for funding submitted by the group last November was rejected by the Trump administration, failing to make it past the first round of the application process. Officials with the group said they intend to continue their efforts to establish the group despite the disappointment, as reported by The Spokesman-Review.

West of the Cascades, the University of Washington received $3 million and Western Washington University received $1 million.

The grants awarded to UW will cover $2 million in equipment for the school’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building and more than $1 million for equipment in a new cold lab housed in the College of the Environment. That’s in addition to $10 million the school will receive, as requested by Murray, to further it’s research into artificial intelligence.

Western intends to use its award to secure a new research vessel for the Shannon Point Marine Center, which will help the school “expand on-the-water research and education opportunities for students, researchers, and others working to promote the health of the Salish Sea,” the release states.

“Between warmer waters, pollution, and habitat loss, scientific research and STEM education in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea is needed more than ever,” Cantwell said.