Two source of funding that I hope UConn will re-establish an upward trend are NIH (which would fall under the Dept. HHS) and private foundations. The availability of grants from the NIH fluctuates with presidential administrations and congress. It grew under the Clinton administration, and fluctuated under Bush and Obama. Early in Obama's first term was the stimulus package which included a one time injection of research money, but when that ended it was back to lean times. Politically, NIH was probably the most popular agency in Congress, but gridlock over basically everything else in government prevented the NIH from actually growing until only recently. So depending on the economy over the next presidential term, we should expect another increase for UConn researchers (though of course all other research U's will also be competing for those grants).
Private foundations appear only recently in their charts (the red data at the top of the 2014 bar in the second histogram). These are more like elite-level (Platinum, top-shelf) grants.Tend to be dominated by the Ivys/Big Ten/Pac12 research hospitals and centers. Those funds don't tend to go up unless someone like Bill Gates decides to start a new institute. It's good that UConn has recently started to compete for some of that, it's very challenging to win but hopefully some of the recent faculty hires at the Health Center and in Storrs, after they get established, get tenure, maaaaaybe will be able to be more competitive.
