The GCC MR was one of the first research consortia in the GCC and was funded by the original Keck Foundation award of $3.5M in 2001. From this award, $2.0M was used to purchase two shared 800 MHz Varian NMRs with cold probes (one placed at UTMB and the other at Rice University). In addition, $500K from the Keck award was used to help purchase a 9.4 T shared small animal imager at Baylor College of Medicine.

In addition, Dow Chemical provided $286K, the John S. Dunn, Sr. Foundation, provided two awards of $750,000 and $550,000, and UTMB another $480K for the remaining cost of high field NMR purchases and maintenance and repair contracts for the two cold probes. In 2006 an application was submitted by Dr. Joel Morrisett to the NIH Shared Instrumentation Program for a Magnetic Resonance Microimaging system. The instrument was funded in the amount of $329,900 that was used to purchase a 9.4T Bruker AVANCE MRI.