Council on Research Meeting Minutes
February 21, 2014
Life Sciences Research Building, Conference Room 1143
2pm-4pm
Members present: Aiguo Dai, James Dias, Lisa Donohue, Hemalata Iyer, Igor Kuznetsov, Kajal Lahiri,
Janet Marler, John Monfasani, Jen Montimurro
Members absent: Tina DeMarco, Erzsebet Fazekas, Samantha Friedman, Kevin Knuth, Loretta Pyles,
Yangzi Isabel Tian
Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by Council on Research Chair, John Monfasani, at 2:03pm.
Approval of Meeting Minutes from January 27, 2014
The minutes were approved with no amendments.
Report of the Vice President for Research:
1. Advanced Data Analytics Consortium
New group gathered from across the University which includes 80 members from a variety
of departments across schools/colleges within UAlbany, focusing on issues related to the
analysis of “big data”. Two meetings have been held so far, and at the first meeting 40
faculty and 4 Deans attended. Subcommittees have been formed to address issues related
to “big data” across the University including examining the curriculum toward creating
data scientists in a variety of fields. An Informatics B.S. is in the early stages of approval.
It is hoped in the course of meetings that it will be possible to find and address what gaps
there might be in available resources for the education of data scientists.
In March, a half-day Presidential Forum on Data will be held on campus inviting members
of the Advanced Data Analytics consortium together with experts from a variety of areas.
The hope is that this event would help start a conversation on how the University can form
partnerships with government and industry to lead the way in dealing with issues related
to big data. This year’s event would be a foundation to build a larger event next year
inviting faculty from across the University. The Advisory Committee for this year’s forum
includes representatives from industry leaders such as Google and representatives from
government including the Governor’s office and the White House.
2. New York Capital Alliance
Group made up of UAlbany, Albany Med and RPI, focusing mainly on biomedical
sciences. NYCAP has funded a number of projects by local scientists, and on June 11th will
be holding a symposium of the scientists presenting the work that was funded through this
program. There is an additional $500,000 available for capital funding, which is to be split
between RPI and UAlbany. UAlbany’s proposal is to use this funding for a confocal
microscope which has not yet been successfully funded through the National Science
Foundation instrumentation grants, replacing a piece of equipment which is out of date.
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3. Networks of Excellence
4E Network - Five $135,000 projects have been funded through the 4E network including
some proposals from UAlbany; additional smaller proposals such as $5,000-$10,000
proposals to convene meetings are currently being funded, including a proposal led by
Chris Thorncroft and DAES for a Severe Weather meeting; the hope is that people would
be enabled to write grants as a result of these meetings.
SUNY BRAIN- Largely involving Stony Brook and UBuffalo as they have more advanced
high-tech facilities; however, UAlbany has a very strong neuroscience program and Li Niu
and Christine Wagner are championing UAlbany involvement in the network.
Health- The Health network received 52 letters of intent for projects, and 25 of those have
been invited to apply for funding including letters of intent from Larry Schell and Paul
Agris.
4. Vice President Dias provided copies of the “Research Moving Forward” recommendations being
submitted to his office by Provost’s Fellow Jennifer Manganello as discussed at the January
meeting.
Committee Reports
1. FRAP Awards Committee
The FRAP subcommittee met twice to review the FRAP award applications and to discuss changes
to the FRAP award application guidelines. Twenty-six applications were reviewed for this year’s
FRAP-A awards, and of those 13 were recommended for funding. Scores given by reviewers were
averaged and rankings determined by comparing the average scores. In the case where three
applications all received the same score, priority was given to junior investigators in accordance
with the guidelines.
After discussion, it was generally agreed that all applicants should receive feedback on their
application, with no indication as to who the reviewer was that generated the feedback. It was
proposed that this feedback be sent out with their notifications from the Vice President for
Research, and they should be encouraged to re-apply. This was put to a vote and unanimously
passed.
The committee’s recommendations for funding were then put to a vote and unanimously passed.
FRAP subcommittee chair Igor Kuznetsov provided the Council with the recommendations of the
committee for number of changes to the FRAP guidelines as discussed at their second meeting:
1) Recommendation: Allow just one faculty member to be a Principal Investigator and
classify all other significant contributors/collaborators as co-PIs. Modify the wording on
page 1, paragraph 3 to reflect a single applicant: “FRAP application can have only one
Principal Investigator. Applicant must hold a tenure track, term appointment or, if
currently in qualified academic rank, have documentation showing that the appointment
will be converted to tenure track. Applicant must be a faculty member who is eligible to be
a Principal Investigator on a Research Foundation award.
The itemized Budget must clearly state the role of and budget allocated for each co-PI.”
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This would allow people to be co-PIs on multiple applications, and allow for more
transparency in terms of what part of the budget they would be allocated (if any).
It was noted that the wording that the applicant must hold a tenure track, term appointment
or, if currently in qualified academic rank, have documentation showing that the
appointment will be converted to tenure track excludes a number of researchers on campus.
This issue was tabled for discussion at a future meeting. (action)
The recommendation of the committee to modify the wording of the guidelines to allow
only one PI was put to a vote and approved.
2) Recommendation: The applicant must disclose all available sources of funding. Add a
bullet “Other Support” to the FRAP application requirements, following “Itemized
Budget”, and “Other Support” page to the application form with the following header:
“Provide details of all active funding available to the PI. Other Support includes all
financial resources available in direct support of an individual’s research endeavors,
including but not limited to research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, and/or
institutional awards, including startup funds”
It was agreed that there was a lack of transparency in the applications with regard to what
funding applicants already had available to them, and whether any funds already available
could be re-budgeted to cover the costs of what they were requesting from FRAP. This new
wording would provide additional information to the review subcommittee who would then
be in a better position to make a decision on funding with all the facts.
It was suggested for further clarity that the wording be slightly amended as follows:
“Provide details of all active funding available to the PI. Other Support includes all
financial resources available in direct support of all of the individual’s research
endeavors, including but not limited to research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts,
and/or institutional awards, including startup funds”
The recommendation with the new wording as amended in the meeting was put to a vote
and passed.
3) Recommendation: Address the issue of the lack of citations in some applications. Modify
“Project Narrative” bullet in FRAP requirements to include “describe the proposed
project including: major theses of the project and investigator’s understanding of the
subject matter supported by relevant key literature citations.”
Make the list of citations mandatory. Add a bullet “References cited” after “Project
Narrative” with the following header: “The References Cited section does not count
toward the five page limit set for Project Narrative. However, only up to 25 references are
allowed and the references should be limited to relevant and current literature. It is
important to be concise and to select only those literature references pertinent to the
proposed research. Each reference must include names of all authors (in the same
sequence in which they appear in the publication), the article title, journal or book title,
volume number, page numbers, and year of publication.”
There was some discussion as to whether it was necessary to specify the exact format
reference citations should take. It was generally agreed that the reference must be a
complete citation so that the work cited could be easily found. It was also noted that
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different fields have different formats for their citations, and choosing one over another
might discourage some people from applying. It was agreed to modify the wording as
follows:
“The References Cited section does not count toward the five page limit set for Project
Narrative. However, only up to 25 references are allowed and the references should be
limited to relevant and current literature. It is important to be concise and to select only
those literature references pertinent to the proposed research following standard citation
format in your discipline.”
It was moved to approve this recommendation for change to the guidelines as modified,
put to a vote and passed unanimously.
4) Recommendation: In order to clarify FRAP eligibility replace the sentence in the first
paragraph of the first page “No faculty member may hold two consecutive awards,
regardless of the category” with the following: There must be at least a 12-month gap
between funding periods, regardless of the category. A faculty member cannot apply for
FRAP if he/she has an open FRAP account, regardless of category.”
There were no objections to the new wording and it was put to a vote and passed
unanimously.
Old Business
1. Absenteeism
Following on from discussion at the last meeting, John Monfasani proposed the following
procedure in relation to future absenteeism from COR: If a member of COR misses three
consecutive meetings, the member is automatically dropped from COR and the Chair is authorized
to seek a replacement through the Chair of the Senate.
This proposal was put to a vote and passed with no objections. Chair John Monfasani will bring
this and the recommendations for changes to the FRAP guidelines to the Senate for approval at
their next meeting. (action)
2. Conference Awards- guidelines revision
Following discussion of the Conference Awards at the December meeting, subcommittee chair
Aiguo Dai brought the following recommendation for change to the conference support awards
application guidelines from the subcommittee:
Current guidance: Conferences eligible for this award must be held at UAlbany and/or in the
immediate Capital District in order to maximize the visibility of the University to national and
international conference participants and to allow as many UAlbany students to attend the
conference as possible.
Proposed change: Conferences eligible for this award must be held at UAlbany and/or in the
immediate Capital District in order to maximize the visibility of the University to national and
international conference participants and to allow as many UAlbany students to attend the
conference as possible. To attract participants from business and other private sectors, certain
conferences held at the SUNY Global Center in New York City may also be considered eligible
for this award.
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The change was discussed briefly and the concern was raised that it might be problematic to specify
one venue for exceptions; questions were asked whether additional venues might be considered,
and whether there might be qualifying venues in the future that didn’t exist yet. It was agreed that
this would require additional discussion, and the proposal was tabled for discussion at the next
meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:00pm.
Submitted by Elizabeth Rooks.
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