Council on Research Meeting Minutes
October 18, 2013
Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1144
9:30am-11:30am
Members present: Aiguo Dai, Tina DeMarco, James Dias , Lisa Donohue, Samantha Friedman, Hemalata
Iyer, Igor Kuznetsov, Kajal Lahiri, Janet Marler, John Monfasani, Loretta Pyles
Members absent: Erzsebet Fazekas, Kevin Knuth, Elaine Lasda Bergman, Jennifer Montimurro, Yangzi
Isabel Tian
Also attending: Adrienne Bonilla, Antigone McKenna, Asher Pauli, Thecla Philip and Theresa Walker
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, John Monfasani, at 9:36am.
Approval of September 19, 2013 Meeting Minutes
The minutes were approved with the following amendment:
1. Igor Kuznetsov’s name to be added to the members of the FRAP-A Awards Review Committee
as his name had been inadvertently omitted from the list in the minutes.
COR Subcommittee Membership Confirmation
The subcommittee list as attached was generally agreed upon, with the following amendments:
1. Lisa Donohue to be added to the Researchers Liaison committee
2. Samantha Friedman’s name to be removed from the list of FRAP-A committee members
(Action). She is serving on the committee reviewing applications in the College of Arts and
Sciences and cannot serve on both.
3. John Monfasani raised the issue that a chairperson was still needed for the FRAP-A Awards
Review committee. After some discussion, Igor Kuznetsov agreed to serve as chair with
procedural support from previous chair Samantha Friedman and COR chair John Monfasani.
4. Additional members are needed for the Benevolent committee, the Conference/Journal Awards
committee, and the FRAP committee. John Monfasani offered to contact people (both COR
members not attending the October meeting and faculty volunteers through Senate) to get
additional members (Action).
The Report of the Vice President for Research was postponed until later in the meeting as the Vice
President was delayed elsewhere.
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Guidelines for FRAP-A committee in dealing with rankings from Schools
At the September meeting John Monfasani, COR chair, had proposed revised text for the FRAP
guidelines from discussion at the April 2013 meeting as follows:
In ranking applications the FRAP-A Committee will take into account any ranking and
justification of such ranking that come from the deans and committees of the various
schools, but shall not be bound by them. The Committee shall come to an independent
determination informed by these data and its own judgment on the relative merits of the
applications.
At the September meeting, it was agreed that a clause should be added to state that the rankings from the
schools/colleges would be shared with the committee after the committee had made their own
independent decision as to how to rank the applications. John Monfasani noted that a clause to that effect
would contradict the text itself, which states that the committee would take the rankings of the schools
into account. The point was made that committee members participating in initial review at the college
level have been very upset on occasions when the rankings of the COR FRAP committee were completely
different from the rankings of the school/college. It was also pointed out that not seeing the rankings of
the colleges until after a decision was made would make the work of the college/school committee
redundant.
The language of the new text for the guidelines was approved as proposed above without further edits.
A question was raised whether we should state that senior faculty are discouraged from applying for a
FRAP award so that they don’t waste their time if they don’t have a chance of being granted an award.
Discussion ensued as to whether the guidelines have changed or are excessively dependent on the
interpretation of the committee members, which is variable, as senior faculty were granted awards last
year. It was suggested that senior faculty might be more likely to be granted an award if the application is
substantially different from their previous work. The need to require appropriate literature review was
also mentioned. It was generally agreed that the review process needs to be more formalized, so that it is
not so dependent on the interpretation of changing membership of the subcommittee. Samantha Friedman
mentioned that the CAS subcommittee members are willing to make recommendations for changes to the
guidelines to make them clearer. It was agreed that these recommendations should be proposed to the
FRAP subcommittee of COR before being brought to a COR meeting for review. The recommendations
for improvements would be expected to be effective next year.
Review Guidelines for FRAP Awards in relation to eligibility of applicants
The issue of the eligibility of PIs to re-apply for a FRAP award when they have received a FRAP award
in the previous year was discussed, specifically in relation to two issues:
1. The proposed new text indicating that a PI could apply for funding for a different project after
having already received a FRAP award could create difficulties for the committee in determining
whether it was actually a new project or not, as it could simply be a re-titled version of the project
for which they previously received funding.
2. It was pointed out that even under the current guidelines there is a grey area where a PI could
apply for a FRAP award for a project that already has FRAP funding; the award period lasts two
years, while the ban on re-applying is only in respect of the first year of the award.
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The general consensus was that on one hand the point of the FRAP awards was to provide seed funding in
order to enable PIs to obtain external grants rather than depending on FRAP awards for funding; however,
the situation of co-PIs is a compelling one where researchers might miss out on funding for new work if
they had been a co-PI on a successful application for a separate project the year before. The suggestion
was made that the language of the eligibility requirements could be softened so that it would no longer be
a determining factor if an applicant had previously been granted a FRAP award. The possibility that their
final report could be taken into account in those cases was raised; if for example, PIs simply needed seed
funding to gather additional data in order to re-submit an external grant application, they would have a
better chance of success.
It was agreed that Janet Marler and John Monfasani would draft proposed texts to soften the language in
relation to the eligibility requirements and applications of co-PIs and would work together to prepare text
that dealt with both issues for the next meeting (Action).
Review relationship of the Conflict of Interest committee and COR
Adrienne Bonilla, Director of the Office of Regulatory Research Compliance, addressed the Council to
request correction of an administrative error in relation to the Conflict of Interest committee and its
relationship with COR. The Conflict of Interest committee was set up as an independent committee much
like the Institutional Review Board, the Institutional Animal Care Use Committee, etc. In 2006, when the
research policies and procedures at UAlbany were being reviewed, the policy was brought to COR to
change the number of faculty members and get faculty involved with the committee through COR. The
Conflict of Interest committee was never intended to report to COR due to the confidential nature of the
materials it deals with. As a result of an administrative error, in 2009, the Conflict of Interest committee
started appearing on the COR agendas along with the list of COR committees expected to give reports.
Adrienne Bonilla requested that the Conflict of Interest committee be removed from the list of COR
subcommittees as it is not intended to report to COR, with a note that the chair of COR will ask for
volunteers to serve as faculty members on the committee at the beginning of each year. The proposal was
put to a vote and the motion carried. Vote: Yes- 7 No- 0 Abstain – 2
Graduate Student funding issue
The Council returned to the issue which had been under discussion at the April 2013 meeting that
recruiting graduate students is increasingly difficult as the university doesn’t offer summer stipends, and
has relatively low stipends compared to many other universities. The question was raised whether COR
has a role to play in this issue. It was agreed that the questions of how to attract good students and how to
give them a chance to get started in research and encourage them were major problems on campus. There
is also a lack of funding for things that come up at the last minute, such as obtaining a dataset, attending a
conference etc. It was pointed out that much of the Alumni Association funding is for scholarships, so
there might be an opportunity there to do some fundraising for graduate research if someone in
Development were available to work on it.
It was agreed that John Monfasani would invite Kevin Williams, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate
Education, to attend a COR meeting to continue the conversation, along with anyone that Dr. Williams
feels would contribute to the discussion.
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Report of the Vice President for Research
Vice President for Research James A. Dias advised COR that the President wants to triple research
funding in ten years. In order to do that, people need to think strategically and target large opportunities,
particularly grants to create centers. There are several areas on campus where a centers grant should be a
reasonable proposition, and faculty should be encouraged to go after these opportunities.
Vice President Dias went on to cover the most recent developments with the SUNY Networks of
Excellence being funded by the SUNY Research Foundation.
1. The 4E Network of Excellence, focusing on societal challenges in energy, the environment,
economics and education, is being coordinated by UAlbany, Binghamton University and the
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
a. This network speaks to UAlbany’s strengths in atmospheric sciences, economics and
education
b. Its mission aligns with the goal of the ETEC building, which is to gather scientific
symposia that include economic and education facets
c. It creates possible opportunities to put together large centers grants
d. Vice President Dias noted that it ties in with the Chancellor’s challenge to increase
retention of STEM students
i. The Division for Research recently submitted a proposal to Howard Hughes
Medical Institute for new program to increase undergrad persistence in STEM.
e. The following process was used for the 4E network allocation of the $1m from the
Research Foundation:
i. A request for proposals was issued.
ii. Ninety-two letters of intent were received in 4 categories, and of those 51 full
proposals have been received requesting up to $150,000 each. The proposals
were required to be interdisciplinary and inter-institutional in nature.
iii. Oak Ridge Associated Universities will review the grant proposals and the hope
is to have them funded by December 1.
2. The Health Now network is being championed by the Vice President for Research counterparts at
SUNY Downstate Medical Center and SUNY Upstate Medical University. Vice President Dias
has voluntarily gotten involved with the network, and others from UAlbany who are participating
in the early stages include Paul Agris of the RNA Institute, Martin Tenniswood of the Cancer
Research Center, Ed Hannan of the School of Public Health, Marlene Belfort of the Department
of Biology and Larry Schell of the Department of Anthropology.
a. More involvement by UAlbany faculty is to be encouraged. People involved in the life
sciences should be hearing about it, and if not, they are requested to let the Office of the
Vice President for Research know.
b. It was discussed that this is also potentially an opportunity to obtain funding for the social
sciences aspect, in relation to the aging population, health disparities etc.
3. The SUNY BRAIN network is to pursue President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative to map the human
brain, which could be done a number of ways including through gene expression, electrical
activity etc. Stony Brook is coordinating this network, and holding an initial symposium with
outside speakers to start the discussion. An effort is being made to get UAlbany people involved.
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4. The SUNY Materials and Advanced Manufacturing Network is being coordinated by the College
of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and the University at Buffalo, and a two day design
charrette is being held in Buffalo. Two major grants have already been submitted from this
network.
The possibility of creating a fifth Network of Excellence for the Humanities has been discussed, but
nothing has been developed yet.
Vice President Dias noted that activities have been much more inter-institutional within the SUNY
system since Tim Killeen became President of the Research Foundation and SUNY Vice Chancellor for
Research. The Vice Presidents for Research now hold monthly meetings and have biweekly telephone
calls, which allows for much more support filling any gaps in each institution from within the SUNY
system.
A question was raised as to how much money from the 4E network of excellence would be for hiring.
Vice President Dias advised that the funding from the networks of excellence is a one-time opportunity
for research money for supplies, postdocs, undergrads etc, rather than for hiring faculty. The idea of the
Networks of Excellence is to provide an initial investment to pursue a big idea or address a major societal
challenge, provide feedback/outcomes to the Governor and then potentially obtain further funding for
successful projects for a further four years. It was observed that many of the networks haven’t yet taken
really big risks but on the positive side people are working together between institutions that didn’t have
much previous interaction. Vice President Dias will keep the Council advised of developments.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:03am.
Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks
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