During Emmert's tenure, UW received more than $1 billion in grant and contract research funding for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007. This marked the first time UW received more than $1 billion in funding for sponsored research in a single year. In his last year at UW, research funding exceeding $1.5 billion. UW has been the top public university in federal research funding since 1974, and among the top five universities, public and private, in federal funding since 1969. In recent years, it has been second only to The Johns Hopkins University. In 2006, under Emmert's presidency, the university created the Department of Global Health and, in the spring of 2007, launched the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. In August 2007, Emmert announced that UW would open an office in Beijing to lay the groundwork for expanding the university's presence in China. Emmert made the announcement during a campus visit by Zhou Wenzhong, ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the United States.