University
Research Council
2007-2008 Activities Report
THE PROVOST’S CHARGE
On October 17, Provost James Maher
delivered the Council charge. He asked
the Council to:
COUNCIL RETREAT
Members of the Council met on June
5th to create an agenda for the upcoming academic year. Areas of interest included:
Council members also discussed a range of potential
multidisciplinary programs, including issues related to traumatic brain injury,
segregation in
FACULTY RESEARCH ASSISTANCE
Central Research Development Fund
Thirty-nine faculty members
submitted proposals to the Central Research Development Fund. Applications were evaluated by one of three
Council subcommittees, whose members specialize in the health sciences, the
sciences and engineering, and the humanities and the social sciences. Eight of 10 proposals from health science
disciplines were funded, nine of 15 proposals from engineering and science
disciplines were funded, and 10 of 14 proposals from humanities and social
science disciplines were funded.
Multidisciplinary Small Grant Program
The Council sponsored the fourth
annual Multidisciplinary
Small Grant Program. The program is designed to enhance
opportunities for the University’s faculty to engage in multidisciplinary
research, scholarship, and creative endeavors.
The program encourages faculty members with different skills and
training to address complex problems that span the humanities, social sciences,
engineering, physical sciences, and/or the biological and health sciences. The Council funded one of the 21
proposals. John Camillus, a Professor in
the Katz Graduate School of Business, will be the principal investigator on the
project, which is entitled The Business of Humanity: Exploring the Emerging
Economic Logic of Strategic Decision Making.
Federal Agency Briefing Trip
Twenty-five members of the University of
Pittsburgh’s and three members of Duquesne University’s engineering and
sciences faculty, as well as five grant administration and other staff,
participated in this year’s annual federal agencies’ briefing trip. Representatives of NSF directorates and
divisions, NIH institutes, Department of Defense agencies, and the Association
of American Universities spoke at the March 17 meeting. The speakers provided information on
discipline-specific research programs, agency contacts, and proposal review
criteria. They also discussed
undergraduate research programs and joint research and educational programs.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY SMALL GRANT PROGRAM REPORTS
Quality Care through Quality Jobs: Retention and Development of the
Direct Care Workforce
Carrie Leana, Professor in the
Katz Graduate School of Business, is the lead investigator on a
multidisciplinary small grant project that deals with direct-care workers, such
as child-care providers and nursing-home employees. Professor Leana collaborates with Jules
Rosen, a Professor in the
Multidisciplinary Research Program on Suffering
Richard Schulz, Director of the
Development of New Pallet Arrays for High-Throughput Screening of Nanoparticle Cytotoxicity
David Waldeck, Professor in the
Department of Chemistry, is the lead investigator on a multidisciplinary small
grant program project that deals with the health effects of nanoparticles
on the human body and the environment.
He is collaborating with Valerian Kagan, Hong-Koo Kim, and Stephen G.
Weber on the project. They are faculty
members in the Departments of Environmental and Occupational Health, Electrical
and Computer Engineering, and Chemistry respectively. Nanoparticles offer
considerable promise for applications that involve imaging and chemical
sensing, among others. However, issues
of toxicity must be addressed before nanoparticles can
be widely used. These issues include:
OFFICE OF RESEARCH
Allen DiPalma, Director of the
Office of Research, frequently reported on the activities of the Office. Milestones and achievements often were
announced. The following is a breakdown
by area:
Electronic Research Administration
The Office of Research was charged
three years ago with developing an electronic, cradle-to-grave proposal
development process (known as Electronic Research Administration or eRA). The Office
selected InfoEd from several potential providers and
purchased two modules – a proposal tracking module and a proposal development
module.
The proposal tracking module is
currently operational. It allows Office
of Research staff to record, track, and report on entire projects instead of
projects’ individual funding increments.
Eventually, proposal tracking will be integrated with several other
University databases to allow for greatly enhanced reporting and administration.
The proposal development module is
being tested in select departments. It
allows for the creation, review, and submission of grant applications and
contracts via a powerful web interface. This module will enable investigators
to route a proposal electronically through the University's internal signature
process and eventually to submit the proposal electronically to a sponsoring
agency.
Grants.gov
Grants.gov, the federal government’s Internet-based, grant-application site, is designed
to improve access to federal funding programs.
Twenty-six federal agencies eventually will require investigators to
submit grants via Grants.gov. The NIH is
transitioning to the Grants.gov system more quickly than most agencies. The NIH now requires that proposals for many
of its most important grant programs, including RO1 proposals, be submitted via
the site.
The Office of Research continues
to educate members of the University community in the use of Grants.gov and
other proposal-submission processes via research administrators training forums
and Grants.gov training forums.
Departments and schools can request more targeted training. The Office may develop a training program for
NSF FastLane due to increasing interest in and use of
the submission process.
From December 2005 through January
2008, University researchers submitted almost 1500 proposals via the Grants.gov
website. Faculty members are submitting
grant proposals via the site at a greater rate than they have in the past. In order to ensure error-free submission, the
University requires applicants to submit their proposals to the Office of
Research 10 days prior to the NIH’s deadlines.
Miscellaneous
Other topics of discussion
included:
RESEARCH-RELATED ISSUES
Members of the Council discussed
several recurring issues during the academic year. These issues included:
Corporate Scholars Program
The Corporate Scholars Program is
designed to enhance collaboration between the University and industry. An individual faculty member will form a collaborative
research relationship with a company, which will sponsor the work of one of its
researchers in the faculty member’s lab.
The University will develop a customized program for each team. The
programs will consist of predetermined research agendas, agreed-upon
expectations, and intellectual exchange among different program teams. Each relationship will last for approximately
six months. The Program was initiated
with start-up funding from the Heinz Endowments.
Effort-Reporting Requirements
The federal government is more
strictly monitoring the effort reporting requirements associated with federally
funded grant proposals. The University
developed an internet-based, educational module entitled “Responsible Conduct
of Research – Effort Reporting Guidelines,” which will help educate University
researchers about these requirements.
NIH Funding
Competition for NIH grants has
increased dramatically over time. From
2001 to 2006, funding rates for all grant proposals decreased from 32 percent
to 20 percent, while funding rates for newly submitted R01 grant proposals
decreased from 26 percent to 16 percent.
Heightened competition may negatively affect new investigators in the
health and biological sciences due to these investigators’ reliance on NIH funding
for support.
NIH Public Access Policy
The NIH will require that all
investigators, whose research is funded by the NIH, to submit articles arising
from NIH-funded projects to PubMed Central. Authors must submit an electronic version of
their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts no later than 12 months after the
official date of publication. The full
text of the policy is located on the agency’s website.
Transformative Research
Transformative research is defined
as research driven by ideas that have the potential to radically change our
understanding of an important existing scientific or engineering concept or
lead to the creation of a new paradigm or field of science or engineering. The NIH fosters transformative research
through the NIH Roadmap Initiative, and the National Science Board, the NSF’s
governing body, approved a motion to enhance support of transformative research
at the NSF.
Undergraduate Research
Undergraduate research is
increasingly emphasized at universities.
The
The plethora of changes in patent rules,
patent reform legislation and recent Supreme Court activity represent a shift
in the patent landscape that will make patents more difficult and more costly
to obtain, easier to invalidate, and less costly to infringe, thus challenging
the ability to procure and maintain patent protection to support the
development of life sciences innovations. This impact will be felt most
significantly where resources for intellectual property protection and
commercialization are limited, such as at universities. Universities will have
to reconsider their established processes for negotiating licenses and
potentially spend additional time and effort renegotiating existing licenses.
MEMBERS
|
Chair |
George E. Klinzing, Vice Provost for Research |
|
|
|
|
Faculty of Arts
and Sciences |
|
|
|
Jeffrey Cohn |
|
|
Paul Florencig |
|
Graduate |
Louise Comfort |
|
Graduate |
Stephen
Wisniewski |
|
Office of the
Provost |
Nicole Constable, FAS |
|
|
|
|
|
Hidenori Yamatani, Social Work |
|
|
Mary Marazita |
|
|
Peyman Givi |
|
|
Jeff Vipperman |
|
|
Katherine Verdolini |
|
|
Ellen Detlefsen |
|
|
|
|
|
Brian Davis |
|
|
Anuradha Ray |
|
|
Chuanyue (Cary) Wu |
|
|
Janice S. Dorman |
|
|
Dexi Liu |
|
|
Gregory L. Page |
|
|
John Mullennix |
|
University
Senate |
Juan Manfredi, FAS |
|
|
Carol Redmond, GSPH |