The University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) strength in neuro-imaging research was the foundation of the successful bid for the federal stimulus funds. The Center for Magnetic Resonance Research and was awarded a highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to develop a state-of-the-art 3-tesla magnetic resonance imaging facility dedicated to research. With State of Illinois support, the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research has built a 9.4 Tesla human scanner, the world's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging machine, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This breakthrough has immensely contributed to the expanding field of magnetic resonance research.

The Center for Cardiovascular Research (CCVR) brings together more than 15 laboratories and facilities focused on defining cures for cardiovascular diseases. UIC researchers were awarded more than $12 million by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the acquired and familial causes of heart failure – with the aim of identifying markers for diagnosis and targets for cures. Over 20 faculty members with educational backgrounds and research experience from all around the world contribute to the cardiovascular research community at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Over the last decade the UIC Program in Cardiovascular Sciences has matured into a true center of interdisciplinary research on heart failure. This scientific focus is internationally recognized as a center of excellence in cardiovascular research such as Integrative Cardiac Metabolism, Cardiac Electrophysiology, and Pulmonary vascular Disease.

The Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) in Urbana brings together world-class faculty and students in a highly collaborative research environment covering materials synthesis and assembly; functional materials for energy harvesting, transport, and storage; and advanced techniques for materials characterization. These fields form part of the research strategy of the institute, the MRL houses several multidisciplinary research programs ranging from quantum materials to soft matter. The MRL is home to two NSF-supported research centers: Materials Computation Center (MCC) & Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures.

The Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory is a multidisciplinary research facility in the UI College of Engineering in Urbana. Research activities that are facilitated by the Laboratory can be divided into four areas which are: Optoelectronics and Photonic Systems, Microelectronics for Wireless Communications, Microelectromechanical Systems, and Nanobiosystems. The Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory is one of the nation’s largest and most sophisticated university-based facilities for semiconductor, nanotechnology, and biotechnology research. It contains over 8,000 square feet of class 100 and class 1000 clean room laboratory and state-of-the-art ultra-high-speed optical and electrical device and circuit measurements. The Laboratory has in the past housed various centers including the NSF-funded Engineering Research Center for Compound Semiconductor Microelectronics and the DARPA-funded Center for Optoelectronic Science and Technology. It currently houses the DARPA-funded Center for Bio-Optoelectronic Sensors and Systems. The laboratory is a User Facility that is available for use by university and industrial personnel from across the nation.

University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Patient Safety Excellence has received a $3 million grant to evaluate its comprehensive process for responding to patient harm events in other hospitals. Even at the safest institutions, patient harm may still occur. Having a process for maintaining communication when harm occurs can be very effective in avoiding unnecessary litigation. An evaluation of the system within the UIC health system found that, when compared to preintervention levels and trends, the process succeeded in increasing the number of adverse event reports submitted to risk management, increasing the number of communication consults offered to patients and families after harm events, increasing the number of peer reviews for clinicians, and decreasing the number of claims made against the health system.

University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Pharmacoeconomic Research promotes and facilitates the advancement of understanding of the clinical, humanistic, and economic impact of pharmaceutical products, contemporary pharmacy services, and medication use policy with respect to the health and safety of patients, organizations, and society. Americans spent more than $231 billion on prescription drugs in 2007, and this cost rises each year. Medication errors harm at least 1.5 million Americans every year, according to the Institute of Medicine. Understanding how to avoid such errors, knowing which agents work for which patients and at what cost will save lives. The long term objective of the Center is to improve the safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness of drug therapy by increasing the appropriateness of prescribing and the quality of monitoring through developing, integrating and disseminating tools and training materials in five key areas: drug formularies, drug utilization review, lab-pharmacy linkages, N-of-1 trials and pharmacoeconomics.

Blue Waters is a joint effort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, its National Center for Supercomputing Applications, IBM, and the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation. It is supported by the National Science Foundation and the University of Illinois.Blue Waters will be based on POWER7 hardware from IBM—makers of more than one-third of the world's 500 fastest computers and almost all of the 40 most "green" supercomputers. It will be the first of a powerful new system design from IBM. The design includes extensive research and development in new chip technology, interconnect technology, operating systems, compiler, and programming environments.

The Institute of Tuberculosis Research (ITR) core team includes 30 diverse members of different background and disciplines. The group occupies 5,500 sq. ft. of labs and offices in the College of Pharmacy at the UIC and boasts research support from the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, the National Institutes of Health, The American Lung Association, The Potts Foundation, fee-for-service arrangements from industry, and a patent royalty stream. In addition, the Institute is in collaboration with many public and private sector institutions around the world to facilitate their efforts towards the same goal. The ITR’s annual budget consists of over one million dollars in grants and contracts. The most notable research discoveries is the microplate Alamar Blue assay (MABA), currently the most widely used assay for TB drug discovery.