Council on Research Meeting Minutes
January 28, 2015
Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1143
11:30am-1:30pm
Members present: Ilham AlMahamid, Indushoba Chengalur-Smith, Aiguo Dai, James Dias, Lisa
Donohue, Keith Earle, Kajal Lahiri, Klil Neori, Patrick Nold, Ian Tucker
Members absent: DawnMarie Helin
Also attending: Theresa Walker
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, Kajal Lahiri, at 11:35am.
Approval of Meeting Minutes from December 17, 2014
The minutes were unanimously approved.
Report of the Vice President for Research, James A. Dias
1. Presidential Initiatives Fund for Research and Scholarship
The deadline for applications to the Presidential Initiatives Fund for Research and Scholarship was
Friday, January 23, and 70 applications were received. The Advisory Council is in the process of being
established, and can be drawn upon to co-chair review panels. The Council is made up of Distinguished
Professors and Deans. The Deans have also been contacted and asked to provide recommendations for
faculty members to serve on review committees which will encompass a variety of faculty from across
the university. There is a deliberately short timeline for review of these applications, and funding will
be awarded within the next couple of months. Some discussion was had confirming that while there
was an emphasis on interdisciplinary ideas for this fund, proposals would be reviewed in terms of the
quality of research and scholarship being pursued.
2. President’s Forum on Data – Health Data Analytics
On February 24th the President’s Forum on Health Data Analytics, part of the UAlbany SUNY2020
program around advanced data analytics, will be held in the D’Ambra Auditorium in the Life Sciences
building. Confirmed keynote speakers are coming in from across the country from UPenn, SAS, and
the University of Notre Dame, among others. The objective of the forum is to stimulate faculty in terms
of where they need to be for health data analytics, and to drive discussion and build partnerships in the
field. Graduate students were also encouraged to attend the forum, to learn about opportunities for
research and how to use analytics to address problems. Particular topics of interest at this forum include
microtechnology, cost of care, and improving the quality of the patient experience.
The Research Division will also be participating in the upcoming Scholars’ Day events for prospective
incoming freshmen, and will also be participating in a visit from the President of the Downstate Medical
School, who will be coming to UAlbany on February 2nd.
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Subcommittee Reports
1. Committee on Centers, Institutes and Specialized Research Laboratories- chair Kajal Lahiri
The Centers committee met again on January 20th to discuss the additional material provided by Dr.
Miesing in support of his application to create the Center for the Advancement and Understanding of
Social Enterprise. Dr. Miesing and the Dean of the School of Business, Donald Siegel, attended the
meeting to address the concerns of the committee. Dr. Miesing agreed to remove the funding from the
conference award from the center’s budget, as it’s not guaranteed that the Center would receive this
funding every year; he also amended the budget to reflect an increase over time for “summer research
assistants”, and removed references to teaching from the proposal. He confirmed that as it’s planned to
be set up with existing faculty, the work of the center would continue whether they received
state/Federal grant money or not. The Dean firmly supported the center proposal, and as the center
would be self-sustaining, the committee recommended that the center be approved by COR. A vote was
held and unanimously passed to approve the proposal for the Center for the Advancement and
Understanding of Social Enterprise.
2. FRAP awards review committee- chair Keith Earle
The subcommittee met on January 23rd to discuss the applications for this year’s FRAP A round of
funding. There were 44 applications, which were each reviewed 3 times, with each subcommittee
member serving as primary reviewer on 4 applications. At the meeting, the committee discussed the
proposals with the most divergent opinions in order to try to come to a closer agreement on the review
of those proposals. Some of the reviewers expressed surprise that the award amounts were so small, as
$10,000 is not a large award. It was noted that the FRAP is intended as seed funding to support students,
travel, and obtaining supplies, but is also intended as a collegial learning experience to enable faculty
to improve their skills at writing grants, as they receive feedback from the committee in relation to their
proposals. It was also noted that some proposals were more heavily technical than others, and faculty
need to learn to write specifically according to the requirements of the funding mechanism they’re
applying for; in this case, proposals need to be written in a way that a non-expert would understand.
Thirteen applications were recommended for funding from a wide cross-section of the university’s
departments, as listed below:
Applicant
Title/position
Department
Assistant Professor
Biomedical Sciences
Assistant Professor
Computer Science
Assistant Professor
Geography and Planning
Assistant Professor
Chemistry
Nilesh Banavali
Petko Bogdanov
Alexander
Buyantuev
Alan Chen
Title of Project
"A next-generation sequencing
assay for sequence-dependent
polymerase errors"
"Detecting and Modeling Bursty
Network Processes"
"Bridging forest phenology at the
individual, community and
landscape scales in the urban-rural
interface of Albany County using
spaceborne and UAV-acquired nearsurface imagery"
"Computational Design of RNAbased Nanosensors"
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Associate Professor
Educational and
Counseling Psychology
Assistant Professor
Public Administration
and Policy
Assistant Professor
History
Assistant Professor
Political Science
Associate Professor
(pending)
Biological Sciences
Associate Professor
Computer Science
Professor
Physics
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences
Professor
Anthropology
Frank Dillon
Jennifer Dodge
Ryan Irwin
Johannes Karreth
Pan Li
Siwei Lyu
Carolyn MacDonald
Hua Shi
David Strait
"HIV Testing Among Latino MSM:
Sexual Identity and Gender Norms
Mediating Engagement"
"Fracking in New York: Strategic
Communication and the Creation of
a Policy Controversy"
"Castle of Sand: Liberal
Internationalism and Its Afterlives"
"The Leverage of International
Institutions in Conflicts Between
States"
"Towards High Throughput SingleMolecule Mechanical Detection"
"3D Tracking Visualization from
Surveillance Videos"
"Focused X-Ray Beam Imaging"
"Aptamer-Enabled Modification of
Bacteriophage Host Range with
Therapeutic Utility"
"Archaeological Excavation at Arma
Vairana"
These recommendations were put for a vote and unanimously approved by the Council.
3. President’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities- chair Kajal Lahiri
The Excellence in Research and Creative Activities awards review committee met on January 21st to
review the nominations for the President’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities.
It was noted that while the guidelines recommend using the tenure package, the more convincing
nomination packages were done specifically for the award. Rather than simply producing the support
letters from the faculty member’s tenure case, it would be best to ask the writers of those support letters
to refresh their letters specifically for this award, particularly in view of the potential for putting those
selected forward for the Chancellor’s Award for Research and Scholarly Activities the following year.
The awards will be presented to the recipients in March, and they are to be notified by the President’s
office in cooperation with the Provost’s office. The number of nominations have stayed between 3-4
over the last several years:
Year
2014-15
2013-14
2012-13
2011-12
2010-11
Number of nominees
4
4
3
3
4
Meeting adjourned 1:10pm
Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks
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