The controversy at the university, a major research center with the biggest enrollment in the State University of New York system with 28,600 students, taps into widespread concerns in academia about the growing influence of corporate money in research as government grants decline. The drilling research arm, the Shale Resources and Society Institute, is seeking to raise $1.14 million in start-up money over the next three years from the oil and gas industry and other sources, according to the university and the institute’s Web site.

University officials, who say they will respond to the criticisms raised, said their goal in founding the institute was to bring academic rigor to the hot-button issue of horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves pumping large volumes of chemicals and water into shale under high pressure to extract gas.

The drilling process has roiled communities in Pennsylvania since it began in full there in 2008, with many residents complaining about air pollution and threats to groundwater aquifers. It has also proved divisive in New York, where the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is finalizing proposed regulations to allow drilling upstate.

E. Bruce Pitman, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo, said in an interview that the idea for the institute came out of a series of seminars on hydrofracking issues held by the geology department last year that pointed up the need for a forum “for the exchange of ideas and debate.” The institute as a whole has yet to receive financial support from the industry, Dr. Pitman said, and its start-up budget — about $40,000 — came from the college’s discretionary funds.

In their report, the shale institute’s researchers said they examined violations by Marcellus Shale drillers in Pennsylvania from January 2008 to August 2011. It said that the incidence of major “polluting environmental events” related to hydrofracking — like contamination of local water supplies and spills — declined by more than half in three years, “a rather notable indicator of improvement by the industry and oversight by the regulators.”