Centralized oversight of University of Kansas research finds its genesis in the KU Center for Research, Inc., or CRINC. In the late 1950s, the then-dean of the KU School of Engineering, John McNown, proposed CRINC as a Midwestern counterpart to Princeton’s research program. In his letters to faculty at other universities, he argued that CRINC would provide unprecedented funding and autonomy to researchers, who would be able to focus almost exclusively on their own passions and research instead of teaching classes. Over the course of a couple years, CRINC would take shape as a corporation separate from KU but under the oversight of the dean of the KU School of Engineering. In 1959, Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy formally announced the establishment of a research center at the university.

Many of CRINC’s biggest achievements have been in the field of remote sensing: in 1964 the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) was founded under the directorship of Professor Raymond C. Moore. Under Moore’s leadership, the RSL would be a pioneer in the field of radar. In 1967 the RSL conceived of the wind-speed scatterometer, and in 1969 they invented the radar-radiometer. CRINC also funded the establishment of the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing Laboratory (KARS), which was founded in 1972 in conjunction with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (NASA). KARS researches applications for satellite and air-borne remote sensing systems.

Throughout its early years, CRINC would partner with NASA to conduct research projects and in 1972 to open the Space Technology Center (also called the STC or Space Technology Laboratories), located in Nichols Hall. The STC housed numerous state-of-the-art laboratories for researchers at KU, which are still in use today.

With the success of the RSL and opening of the Space Technology Center, CRINC would continue to grow over the coming decades. In 2005, research from the RSL and KARS would help lead the establishment of a KU-headed Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS), a partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF), KU, and several other universities. CReSIS was the result of a $19 million grant from the NSF to establish a new research center at the university under the leadership of Deane Ackers, distinguished professor of engineering, and former computer science professor Prasad Gogineni.

While the CRINC’s beginnings were rooted in science and technology fields, and while this record group mostly focuses on those same fields, the KU Office of Research now administers research institutes across a wide variety of disciplines. In its current form, the Office of Research administers funding and technical support to researchers working at all 12 KU research institutes and their subsidiaries.