Year: 2022

In late November, we were afforded a distinct opportunity to showcase our facilities, our capabilities, and most importantly, our people to one of the nation’s most influential scientists.

National Science Foundation director Sethuraman Panchanathan left our Greenville campus impressed with what we are building here together, particularly with our success in collaborating with industry and community partners to advance meaningful, impactful research.

“Seeing the synergistic and symbiotic systems of students, public funding and private industry happening here, we should determine how we scale activities here and use Clemson as an example all around the country,” Dr. Panchanathan said during his visit.

Use Clemson as an example.

You can hear some of Dr. Panchanathan’s remarks here and learn more about his visit here.

The visit followed a string of successes for our research enterprise that our peers are certainly noticing.

In February, we welcomed U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to the Dominion Energy Innovation Center at our Lowcountry campus as she was highlighting advancements in clean energy innovation. While visiting the Clemson facility, Granholm said South Carolina had a real opportunity to be a leader in energy technology.

The same month, the chief scientist for the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center, David Gorsuch, visited Clemson to help celebrate another $22 million to support the Virtual Prototyping of autonomy-enabled Grounds Systems (VIPR) Research Center project at Clemson. Our facility and expertise made Clemson uniquely positioned for the project, he said.

At Clemson, we continue to make a name for ourselves as a top research institution, and the scholarly community is taking notice. We are building a winning culture. We are thinking big and winning big and proving that we can handle large, interdisciplinary research projects. The VIPR project involves 62 faculty members and 125 graduate students spread across 10 departments.

Clemson recently received its first Energy Frontier Research Center project from the Department of Energy, a $10.35 million grant that involves five Clemson departments and numerous partners, including two national labs.

The new USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities project marked the largest single grant Clemson has ever received from a federal funding agency – $70 million.  The project involves 29 Clemson faculty and 20 graduate students across 11 departments, as well as an impressive state coalition of 27 community partners.

We now have four NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, the most active COBRE projects a university can have at one time. What a feat for a university without a medical school. We have EPSCoR projects from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. These involve dozens of faculty members and students.

And, importantly, it is not just the grants. The number of Clemson-authored journal publications has increased 42 percent over the past decade, and citations of Clemson research have increased 82 percent. Clemson faculty members have recently earned lifetime achievements awards from InnoVision, the American College of Healthcare Architects, and the Society of Wetlands Scientists, and Universities Council on Water Resources. Clemson has its first ever member of the prestigious American Philosophical Society. The Production and Operations Management Journal named a research award in honor of a Clemson faculty member. Faculty members from every college have earned national and international fellowships in their fields – art, education, architecture, health care, global studies, leisure and recreation, engineering, business, agriculture, physics, and so many more. There are too many to list but I see them and proudly report many of them each quarter to the university’s Board of Trusts.

And, we have exceptional students carrying the Clemson torch – our first Rhodes Scholar; our first Gates Cambridge Scholar; a Truman Scholar; a Hertz Fellowship recipient; and on and on.

These are only a few examples; I should apologize for unintentionally leaving others out. There are so many shining examples of great research happening at Clemson (There are nearly 1,800 research projects happening across Clemson’s footprint right now, by the way, and that’s an increase of nearly 25 percent from 2016.)

These projects and recognitions shine a light on what is possible. Keep going.

Congratulations to everyone on another successful semester. As we head into another calendar year, I challenge us all to continue to think big.

Thank you for your support of scholarship and discovery at Clemson. Have a wonderful holiday season and a restful break.

Go Tigers!

October 2022 Research Report

Since we released the R-Initiative funding programs in 2017, we have invested $10 million in research projects involving nearly 600 faculty members. Funds have been distributed to every college.

On R-Initiatives awarded through 2020, faculty members have authored 10 books; published 83 articles and presentations; conducted 11 art exhibitions and residencies; hired 23 postdocs and research associates; and secured $15 million in external funding with another $21 million in proposals pending. Additionally, about 100 students have earned their PhDs with support from R-Initiative funding.

More proposals are being prepared and numerous R-Initiative projects remain active. In other words, the return on that investment continues to grow.  

R-Initiatives were established to help enhance a culture of scholarship and discovery by investing in people and celebrating great work. These have been worthwhile investments that have contributed to the rising tide of our research enterprise. Since 2017, research awards and expenditures at Clemson have increased 45 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

These programs have nurtured interdisciplinary collaborations. In one project funded by The Fellows R-Initiative program, engineers, political scientists and psychologists collaborated on a project about resiliency. Another included faculty from architecture, health sciences, civil engineering, and psychology. Education and engineering faculty joined together on another. Plant and environmental sciences faculty joined environmental engineers and biological sciences faculty on another. These are just a few examples of the interdisciplinary collaborations that have received R-Initiative investments. Each specific R-Initiative webpage includes a list of past recipients, so you can view awards for each program online and see examples of the interdisciplinary research happening. It is exciting. These R-Initiatives are sparking conversations, encouraging people to meet people outside of their disciplines and learn more about the diverse research happening at Clemson. There are undeniable, unquantifiable benefits to this collaboration.

I want to thank you for your interest in these programs and, if you haven’t taken advantage of these opportunities yet, I encourage you to see what is offered this year. Consult the R-Initiatives webpage for details on funding available, application deadlines and eligibility. I believe, there is something for everyone.

As we evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, for example, we see that faculty from all colleges are participating, and those who apply, regardless of their discipline, are highly likely to be funded.  As Figure 1 shows, around 75 percent of the people named in an R-Initiative proposal were ultimately part of a funded project and faculty from every college are participating. So again, please visit our R-Initiatives website to see which program works for you and prepare an application.

In addition to funding opportunities, R-Initiatives celebrate our accomplishments through the Research of the Year and University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Awards, and offer numerous opportunities for professional growth:

• The CAREER Academy, for example, provides a dedicated support structure for untenured junior faculty who are planning to submit National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) proposals. In 2020 and 2021, 10 junior faculty members at Clemson earned early career awards. These are important catalyst awards for young faculty starting their careers.
• The NIH Accelerator Program provides intensive mentoring for early-career investigators seeking NIH funding.
• The Office of Research Development has planned numerous workshops throughout the year covering many topics: crafting competitive proposals; selling your science; communicating the impact of your work; building successful research teams; and more.
• Through its TigerSphere program, ORD also is facilitating the formation of teams of researchers from different disciplines who share thoughts, build relationships, and form convergent research collaborations around a central theme. We encourage you to submit an idea for a TigerSphere.
• The Office of Research Compliance has scheduled several Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training sessions that qualify for RCR advanced training credit hours.

I hope you will find these programs worth your time, and if you have any ideas for ways the Division of Research can improve its service to you, please contact your representative on my Research Advisory Board.

Have a great semester!

Sincerely,

Tanju

July 2022 Research Report

April 2022 Research Report

I am excited to share that Clemson was reconfirmed as a Carnegie R1 research university in January. This is the top designation Carnegie awards to doctoral universities with the highest levels of research activity.

A key goal of the ClemsonForward strategic plan, the R1 designation improves our reputation, helps us recruit the best students and faculty members, improves our competitiveness for funding, and invites world-class collaborators both from academia and industry.

Clemson has now reached R1 status for three consecutive classification cycles, moving us closer to our goal of becoming a “perennial Carnegie R1 research institution.” This success is shared by everyone at Clemson; Carnegie tracks research activity and PhD productivity across all disciplines. Despite a global health pandemic, Clemson has continued to improve in the metrics tracked by Carnegie. You can view Clemson’s performance in those metrics in my latest report to the Board of Trustees. I am proud to share that our research enterprise remains healthy. Here are few highlights from the report:

• Clemson’s research enterprise operates efficiently, with strong increases in per-capita productivity over the past eight years.
• Research awards remain strong at $76 million through the second quarter of fiscal year 2022 as Clemson faculty continue to earn high-value awards, and proposal submissions remain high at $313 million through the second quarter.

The quarterly research report also highlights numerous faculty and student achievements. In fact, three faculty members spoke during the quarterly meeting of the Board of Trustees Research and Economic Development Committee to share the impact of their research:

• Rhondda Thomas, Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature;
• Lior Rennert, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences; and
• Derek Dalton, Powers Distinguished Fellow in the College of Business.

You can read more about their work, as well as the work of other faculty members, in the full research report online here.

Updates from Funding Agencies

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently issued updates to proposal requirements.

National Science Foundation (NSF): On Jan. 10, 2022, NSF issued an updated list of activities that must be included in Current and Pending Support documents. This update now requires the following:

1. disclosure of start-up packages provided by an organization outside of Clemson University; and
2. a brief statement of overall objectives for each item listed on the Current and Pending document (view Item 11 on the FAQ).

National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH’s Other Support disclosure table is available here. This updated list clarifies the following:

1. disclosure of all Honoraria;
2. disclosure of mentoring support from outside organizations as in-kind Other Support “if the post-doc or graduate student is performing research activities in support of the PD/PI or other senior/key personnel’s research endeavors;”
3. effective Jan. 25, 2022, researchers must certify by electronic signature that the information provided on their Other Support document is “accurate, current and complete.” Information on creating and using an electronic signature is available here. The updated Other Support form with the signature block is available on the NIH FAQ page;
4. if foreign appointments and/or employment with a foreign institution are included on the Other Support document, associated contracts/agreements must be provided to NIH with the Other Support form; and
5. Other Support disclosure requirements apply to Just-in-Time (JIT), annual progress reports (RPPR), the final progress report, and as soon as possible when it is discovered that Other Support has not been disclosed during any of these instances

A special note on consulting activities:  Both NIH and NSF require disclosure of all consulting activities not already disclosed or approved by the university. Clemson faculty are required to disclose all outside activities as described in the Faculty Consulting Policy and the Conflict of Interest Policy, both of which are very broad, so it’s highly unlikely that consulting will need to be disclosed at all on either Current and Pending Support or Other Support documents. If you have questions about whether a consulting activity needs to be disclosed, we recommend that you consult with the Office of Sponsored Programs directly.

If you have any questions about these changes, please contact Dr. Sheila Lischwe, Director, Office of Sponsored Programs, at slischw@clemson.edu.

Thank you for all you do to support scholarship and discovery at Clemson.

–Tanju

January 2022 Research Report