Six Degrees of Separation among US Researchers

Funding from the government agencies has been the driving force for the research and educational institutions particularly in the United States. The government funds billions of dollars every year to lead research initiatives that will shape the future. In this paper, we analyze the funds distributed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a major source of research funding in the States, to understand the collaboration patterns among researchers and institutions. Using complex network analysis, we interpret the collaboration patterns at researcher, institution and state levels by constructing the corresponding networks based on the number of grants collaborated. We further analyze the directorates to identify the differences in collaboration trends between disciplines.