Council on Research Meeting Minutes
December 17, 2014
Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1143
10:30am-12:30pm
Members present: James Dias, Lisa Donohue, Keith Earle, Kajal Lahiri, Janet Marler, Klil Neori, Ian
Tucker
Members absent: Ilham AlMahamid, Aiguo Dai, DawnMarie Helin
Also attending: Adrienne Bonilla, Theresa Walker
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, Kajal Lahiri, at 10:35am.
Approval of Meeting Minutes from November 18, 2014
There was some confusion with the wording of the third paragraph in reference to the FRAP guidelines
review, which stated “The updated version of the guidelines require that applicants disclose what their
current funding is, but applicants may not clearly define all funds that they have available for use”. It
was recommended that this be changed to “The updated version of the guidelines require that applicants
disclose what their current funding is. Despite these new guidelines, applicants still do not clearly
disclose the exact amounts of current funding they have available for their research.”
The minutes were unanimously approved as amended above.
Report of the Vice President for Research, James A. Dias
1. Presidential Initiatives Fund for Research and Scholarship
The Fund was successfully launched and the next step is to convene the Advisory Board, which will be
composed of Distinguished Professors, to convene the review committees which will evaluate the
proposals submitted. This is planned as an ongoing initiative to support high-impact projects which will
have reputational benefit for the university and/or lead to external grant funding. A FAQ page is in
preparation and will be added to the website shortly. The timeline to spend the funds is six months, to
ensure high impact. A number of questions were then asked about the program as follows.
Question: could the funding be used for capital purchases?
Vice President Dias confirmed that this would be possible depending on whether the argument made
for the purchase was compelling. It was noted that often capital equipment has long lead times, and the
Vice President confirmed that his office will work with the PIs on the timeline where necessary.
Question: will the Council on Research be involved in the review process?
The Council is not to be involved in the review process for this program, however, Vice President Dias
encouraged any members of the Council who wish to participate to contact him.
Question: How were specific funding areas determined?
The funding areas were selected to align with UAlbany’s SUNY2020 pillars, apart from atmospheric
sciences, where a significant amount of other projects have already been supported by the Research
Division. This new program is to encourage people to look for opportunities through interdisciplinary
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projects, to interact with other departments across the university, to engage industry and do work that
would have reputational benefit for the university.
2. SUNY Networks of Excellence
The SUNY Networks of Excellence is adding a fifth network focusing on the arts and humanities, in
addition to the SUNY BRAIN, Health, Materials & Advanced Manufacturing and 4E networks that
already exist. A sixth network focused around teaching and learning is also in the planning stages. The
next round of funding is currently being launched with $1million available for each network including
$150,000 for one-year grants for conferences and training undergraduates in these research areas. This
money is being provided by the SUNY Research Foundation to stimulate research across the SUNY
system.
Subcommittee Reports
1. Committee on Centers, Institutes and Specialized Research Laboratories- chair Kajal Lahiri
The Centers committee met on Wednesday, December 10th, to discuss the proposal for the Center for
Advancement and Understanding of Social Enterprise which has been revised and re-submitted by Dr.
Paul Miesing after support for the first proposal for this center was declined by the Council on Research
last spring. The committee expressed a reservations about the proposal as it currently stands,
particularly as it depends heavily on external funding but shows no track record of previously obtaining
external funding. Additionally, while the Dean of the School of Business is a well-regarded expert in
this area and has expressed support for the center, nothing has been received in writing making a
commitment to financial support of the center, which the committee had concerns about. The chair has
contacted Dr. Miesing to request additional information to address the concerns of the committee and
will report further when the committee has received and reviewed this information.
2. Benevolent Association Graduate Student Research Awards review committee- chair Lisa-Anne
Donohue
The Benevolent Association Graduate Student Research Awards review committee met on Wednesday,
December 10th, to review 9 applications for a total of $3,500 in available funding. The committee felt
that all 9 applications were strong, well-motivated applications, but due to the funding restrictions as
not all could be funded, they declined to fund two proposals which appeared to be projects that would
run for a longer period than the spring 2015 semester, and for those two proposals they would
recommend that the applicants re-submit for the spring round of funding. The funded applications are
listed below:
Applicant
Department
Title of proposal
Rupa Choudhary
Biology
"Molecular Aspects of Cytokine
Signaling During Optic Nerve
Regeneration in Xenopus laevis"
Cory Fischer-Hoffman
Latin American,
Caribbean and US
Latino Studies
Department
"The Prison Crisis in Hybrid Postneoliberal Venezuela"
Amount
funded
$500.00
$500.00
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Yeufen Hsieh
Political Science
Vivian Hwang
Clinical Psychology
Crystal Robinson
Psychology
Mahboob Ur Rehman
Physics
Stephanie Wemm
Clinical Psychology
"The Politics of Israeli Immigration
Control Policy in Comparative
Perspective"
"Brief Intervention for Cannabis
Use Among College Students"
"Adaptive memory: a bilingual
exploration"
"X-Ray Coherent Scattering"
"The impact of stress on
hormones and cue reactivity in
addictions"
$500.00
$500.00
$500.00
$490.00
$500.00
The Council on Research voted unanimously to approve the recommendations of the committee.
3. Conference Support Awards review committee – chair Aiguo Dai (not present, recommendations
submitted by email)
The Conference Support Awards committee reviewed six applications for conference support. The
committee felt that these were all strong applications which were worthy of support; however, as a total
of $12,500 was available for funding and $13,525 had been requested, some reductions had to be made.
The committee agreed to fund the following proposal amounts:
Name
Dept
Conference Title
Amount
Awd Amt
Requested
Recommended
Women's, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies
"3rd Annual Capital District
Feminist Studies Conference"
$1,025
$1,000
Erica Fretwell
English
"Americanist Lecture Series:
Archives of the Past, Archives of
the Present"
$2,500
$2,000
Kir Kuiken
English
"Rethinking Sovereignty"
$2,500
$2,500
Criminal Justice
"The History of the Death
Penalty: Connecting the Past,
Present, and Future"
$2,500
$2,500
Rajani Bhatia
James Acker
The committee was unable to come to an agreement as to which of the following two conferences
should have their budgets reduced by $500. On one hand, it was argued that the Stereodynamics
conference had a very large budget, and therefore might feel the reduction less; on the other, if full
support was not given to this very visible large-scale conference, it might send a message that the
university did not fully support a successful conference.
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After some discussion, the Vice President for Research recommended that $500 be moved from the
spring round of funding to make up the difference, and that both of these conferences be fully funded
as follows:
Name
Dept
Conference Title
Amount
Awd Amt
Requested
Recommended
Ramaswamy
Sarma
Chemistry
"Albany 2015: The 19th Conversation
in Biomolecular Stereodynamics"
$2,500.00
$2,500
John Justino
Health
Policy,
Management
and Behavior
"Innovative Cancer ResearchTranslating Clinical and Population
Research into New Approaches to
Treatment and Enhanced Prevention,
Early Detection, and Quality Care"
$2,500.00
$2,500
The Council on Research voted unanimously to approve the funding recommendations as outlined
above.
In the course of discussion, the issue was raised that some conferences appear to be obtaining support
every year from what is intended to be a competitive award program. It was recommended that this
issue be reviewed with a view to amending the guidelines for the 2015-16 academic year.
4. FRAP awards review committee- chair Keith Earle
The subcommittee membership has been confirmed and review assignments are nearly completed, with
every effort being made to ensure that a) everyone has an equal load of reviews to do and b) people
review proposals that are in fields which are similar to their own in the hope that they would have a
better understanding of significance and methodology of the research being proposed. The committee
plans to meet in January to discuss the applications and make funding recommendations.
5. President’s Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activities- chair Kajal Lahiri
The Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activities awards review committee has been confirmed and
will be meeting in January to discuss the nominations for the President’s Award for Excellence in
Research and Scholarly Activities. The recommendations of the committee will then be submitted to
the Vice President for Research for approval, and shared with the Council on Research for the Council’s
information only.
Meeting adjourned 12pm
Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks
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