University Research Council

December 16, 2010

Meeting Summary

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InfoEd Update

Eric Larson and Mike Ranieri from the Office of Research discussed InfoEd, the University’s electronic grant-management software. They provided a demonstration of the proposal development module, which enables researchers to create, review and submit grant applications and contracts via a web interface. This module will help investigators to route a proposal electronically through the University’s internal signature process and will permit them to submit the proposal electronically to the sponsoring agency. Additional advantages include:

• Automatic selection of the required forms based upon the opportunity number chosen
• Pre-population of the principal investigator’s information in the selected forms

The Office currently is working with several departments to test the proposal development module. Council members also discussed goals for future module development and questions related to data entry. The Office of Research previously deployed the proposal tracking module.

Report from the Office of Research

Allen DiPalma, Director of the Office of Research, discussed several aspects of the Office’s operations:

• The Office of Research will periodically sponsor an open forum entitled “Ask the Office of Research.”
• InfoEd hopes to provide the material transfer agreement (MTA) portal to the University by the end of next January.

Multidisciplinary Projects

The Provost’s Office is exploring three multidisciplinary topics: how to apply immunology models to cybersecurity, how to minimize the complexity of manufacturing models, and how to use social networks to enhance problem solving. Teams are meeting regularly to work on the projects.

Miscellaneous

Council members also discussed the Central Research Development Fund (i.e., the Small Grants Program).