UCR
Research and Economic Development Newsletter: January 5, 2013
Michael
Pazzani
Vice
Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
Corporate
Partnerships
I’m
pleased to announce that Misty Madero has joined the Research and Economic
Development Office. Misty will specialize in negotiating contracts
with corporations including sponsored research, material transfer, and
confidentiality agreements with corporate partners.
Misty
Madero comes to the University of California, Riverside after nearly 13 years
of service to Arizona State University (ASU). At ASU, she served as a
Senior Contract Officer with the Office of Industry Research &
Collaborations, where she managed various types of contractual agreements with
industry sponsors. Misty holds a Masters in Public Administration and a
Bachelor in English. She is also a member of the National
Contract Management Association. Misty can be reached at
(951) 827-2210 or misty.madero@ucr.edu.
Material transfer agreements may be sent to MTA@ucr.edu
and confidential disclosure agreements (also called nondisclosure agreements)
may be sent to cda@ucr.edu.
Misty’s
goal is to get same day signature on most CDA agreements. She can provide
template agreements that will speed up most corporate
relationships. Involving her early in the contract discussions with
a company can help shape the agreement toward something that meets the
company’s goals and is easy to implement at UCR.
Meeting
Potential Collaborators at UCR
Some
faculty have mentioned to me that they’d like to find ways to meet and identify
other faculty at UCR for potential research collaborations. There are
several ways to address this. Stan Fletcher in the Research and Economic
Development Office has put together a search engine and web site with the
abstracts of all federal grants at UCR (see http://or.ucr.edu/OrApps/SP/Blog/Awards.aspx).
If you type a phrase such as “data mining” you can find all federal awards on
this topic.
For
those that want to meet others in person, my office is sponsoring a
series of lunch seminars on various topics. Suggestions for additional
topics are welcome. The goal is to have 5-15 faculty present brief 3-5
minute presentations on their current work and desired future directions on
topics that inherently cross colleges at UCR. My office will provide
lunch and a laptop and projector. Below is a tentative schedule of
topics.
Feb
1: Big Data: managing, analyzing, visualizing, and extracting
useful information from large, diverse, distributed and heterogeneous data sets
so as to: accelerate the progress of scientific discovery and innovation
Feb
15: Health Care Disparities: Research on population-specific differences
in the presence of disease, health outcomes, quality of health care and access
to health care services that exist across groups
Feb
22: Entrepreneurism: For faculty interested in seeing their research
become the foundation for commercial products
March
1: Materials synthesis and processing
March
15: Video and Image Analysis. Technologies for collecting, storing,
retrieving and analyzing images and video and applications of these
technologies.
March
22: Social and Graphical Networks: Analysis of graphical structure made up of a
set of entities (such as individuals or organizations) and the relationships
between these objects. Social networks and the analysis of them is an
inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social
psychology, sociology, statistics, computer science, and graph theory.
March
29: High-Throughput Screening and Drug Design
If
you are interested in attending and presenting, send me mail (pazzani@ucr.edu) including a talk title, and
one of the above themes into which your talk fits. If fewer than 4
faculty sign up for a topic, the seminar will be canceled. All
seminars will start at noon and be held in University Office Building 210. I’m
very interested in faculty from ANY department proposing additional with the
goal of building collaborations that might otherwise not happen.
NSF
Acceptance Rates
Each
year, NSF computes the acceptance rates of various universities and
programs. In a future newsletter, I’ll identify some “sweet spots,”
i.e. programs with high acceptance rates. Here, I focus on data
comparing UCR to other universities.
University |
Submissions |
Awards |
Acceptance |
U
of Cal - Merced |
74 |
13 |
18% |
U
of Cal Berkeley |
444 |
139 |
31% |
U
of Cal Davis |
385 |
98 |
25% |
U
of Cal Irvine |
300 |
88 |
29% |
U
of Cal Los Angeles |
377 |
104 |
28% |
U
of Cal Riverside |
212 |
45 |
21% |
U
of Cal San Diego |
390 |
120 |
31% |
U
of Cal San Francisco |
27 |
9 |
33% |
U
of Cal Santa Barbara |
246 |
77 |
31% |
U
of Cal Santa Cruz |
226 |
54 |
24% |
U
of Cal SD Scripps |
144 |
52 |
36% |
It’s
part of my role to help UCR attract more funding and increasing the
acceptance rate of UCR at NSF and other agencies is one way to achieve
this. I have heard some concern among faculty about whether the
federal funding goals in mean work for faculty. I don’t
think it involves more work for UCR if we focus on increasing the acceptance
rate vs. submitting more proposals. If UCR’s acceptance rate were
the same as UCSB, it would result in an increase of funding of about 50% from
NSF.
In
the past few months, the Research and Economic Development Office have set up
an Office of Proposal Development, headed by Randy Black to assist faculty in
submitting quality proposals. Randy works closely with Mitch Boretz in
BCOE and Mike Mueller in CNAS on collecting information on assessment,
evaluations, and outreach programs at UCR that are essential to the broader
impacts of NSF and other agencies. Assistance is also available with
proofreading and making sure the proposal addresses the review criteria.
We
have also provided an electronic guide with valuable advice on proposal
writing. (see http://or.ucr.edu/OrApps/RD/Instruction/New%20Faculty%20Guide%20to%20Research%20Funding%20Institutional.pdf).
Below is a general piece of advice from this guide
The
fundamental requirement of the proposal narrative at the time of submittal is
that it be a well-written document that responds fully, clearly, and
persuasively to the research goals and objectives and review criteria defined
by the sponsor in the funding solicitation, or the agency guidelines in the
case of an unsolicited proposal.
On
Feb 1, at 10:10, I will lead a panel of faculty who will discuss proposal
writing for NSF and share their perspectives and experiences. Details are
below. Future workshops will focus on other agencies including NIH and
NEH.
NSF:
Stay within the Lines
In
the past year, 6 proposals submitted to NSF from UCR were returned without
review. In most cases, it was minor errors in proposal format that
resulted in the proposal being returned. Unfortunately, this is an
increasing trend at NSF. For more than a decade, Congress has been
pressuring all federal agencies to be accountable and budget increases at
agencies have been dependent in part on demonstrations that the agencies adhere
to policies and procedures. NSF has been singled out as an agency
that is well managed and part of that is making sure that proposals conform to
requirements. A recent report, FY 2011 Performance and
Financial Highlights, http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12002/nsf12002.pdf
included this quote:
NSF
continued its comprehensive, multistage review program resulting in a recipient
reporting compliance rate of 99 percent every quarter beginning in December
2009. This effective program established NSF as a leader sought out by the
accountability and transparency community for government-wide process
improvement recommendations.
The
following examples of reasons for returning proposals should serve as reminders
about how compliant NSF can be (and how easy it is to create metrics that
measure items of so little importance).
NSF
announced last month changes to Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures
Guide for proposals due January 14, 2013, and later. Pay attention
in particular to a change that the Biographical Sketch now calls for a list of
Products rather than Publications (see http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf13001).
Workshop:
Submitting a Winning NSF Proposal, February 1, 10:10am
On
Friday, February 1 at 10:10 in the Genetics Auditorium, a workshop will be held
in which UCR faculty discuss strategies for writing a successful NSF
proposal. I served as a division director at NSF for four years and
was involved with the review of over 8000 proposals. I’ve
collected lists of common mistakes at NSF and will discuss. In addition,
several faculty will present their insights on NSF including
Keck
Foundation: Limited Submission: Deadline Jan 21
The
Keck Foundation http://www.wmkeck.org/grant-programs/grant-programs.html
strives to fund endeavors that are distinctive and novel in their approach. It
encourages projects that are high-risk with the potential for transformative
impact. "High-risk" comprises a number of factors, including
questions that push the edge of the field, present unconventional approaches to
intractable problems, or challenge the prevailing paradigm.
Supporting
pioneering discoveries in science, engineering and medicine has been our
mandate from the beginning. By funding the high-risk/high-impact work of
leading researchers, we are laying the groundwork for new paradigms,
technologies and discoveries that will save lives, provide innovative
solutions, and add to our understanding of the world. Both Senior and Early
Career investigators are encouraged to apply.
UCR
may submit up to four proposals in the science and engineering category, and
four in medicine. The key criteria for selection by Keck, and hence by
UCR, is that the proposed project be novel with high impact and that it have
high risk, perhaps too risky for NSF or NIH to fund.
Interested
faculty should submit a prepropsoal following the format at http://or.ucr.edu/ord/limitedsubmissions.aspx
by January 21, 2013.
Federal
Funding Priorities
Late
last year, there was a series of webinars on federal funding priorities of
various agencies. The presentations are now online and can be accessed
through the links below. Video is also available at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2omq8x5P5V7exeij7QCOcYb9a0sWOQcl
White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy |
||
Department
of Education |
||
Department
of Education |
||
National
Institute of Food and Agriculture |
||
National
Science Foundation |
||
Bipartisan
Policy Center |
||
Department
of Energy Office of Science |
|
|
Health
Resources and Services Administration |
|
|
Air
Force Office of Scientific Research |
|
|
National
Institutes of Health |
|
|
Office
of Naval Research |
|
|
National
Science Foundation |
|
|
National
Endowment for the Humanities |
|
|
Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality |
|
|
Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration |
|
Funding
Opportunities by Email
Several
faculty have mentioned to me that it would be nice to get email on funding
opportunities. It turns out that the grant search engine UCR subscribes
to has this facility. Just go to http://pivot.cos.com
(and create an account with your UCR email address), and enter a search query
such as “data mining.” You’ll see the funding opportunities currently
available, and if you click on “Save your query” you’ll get a weekly email such
as
From: fundingalert@cos.com [mailto:fundingalert@cos.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012 3:21 PM
To: Michael Pazzani
Subject: COS Funding Alert for Michael Pazzani
Funding
alerts for your saved searches
Results:
December 23, 2012
Data
Mining
Common
Goldeneye
In spite of its name, the common goldeneye
is a somewhat rare bird, particularly for UCR. A diving duck, it is one
of the last to migrate south and prefers to stay as far north as
possible, just avoiding frozen waterways. I took this photo
of a female common goldeneye in the AgOps area of UCR the day after
Thanksgiving.
(click
to enlarge)