A Rare Opportunity

There are fewer than 300 living Nobel laureates in the world, so the chance of meeting one is very rare. But a Nobel laureate was on campus last month, meeting with faculty and students, answering their questions and sharing knowledge. These are the types of activities and opportunities available at universities that display the highest levels of research activity, at Carnegie R1 universities.

After spending the morning meeting privately with faculty and graduate students, Nobel laureate Robert Grubbs spoke to a packed crowd at the Watt Family Innovation Center auditorium, providing an overview of the metathesis method in organic synthesis. Grubbs was co-recipient of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2005 for his discovery of this metathesis method. Metathesis is an organic reaction that allows chemists to replace certain atoms in a compound with atoms from another compound to create customized molecules with specialized properties. Metathesis has paved the way for the development of new polymers, pharmaceuticals, plastics and other materials.

https://youtu.be/oK20OxTBbfo

In addition to detailing the science, Dr. Grubbs walked the audience through some of the surprise findings made along the way and the many collaborations that led to his discovery. Read more about his visit here and watch the video to hear Dr. Grubbs speak about failures, successes, surprises, career choices and more.

I encourage you to pursue collaborations as Dr. Grubbs has. Wednesday’s Research Symposium at the Watt Family Innovation Center offers a great opportunity for you to find collaborators with similar interests. There will be numerous panel discussions on research. Visit the Symposium website to view a schedule of events and read the abstracts for the presentations. The Symposium serves as the conclusion of Research Innovation Month, in which we celebrate our research accomplishments and the impact scientific discovery has on the human condition.

In that spirit, President Clements and I will present our most accomplished faculty with University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Awards (URSAAA) during the Symposium. This newly created awards program recognizes faculty who have achieved the highest levels of national and international recognition. As an institution, we should do more to recognize the outstanding work of our faculty to remind them that their work is important, that it is appreciated, and that their accomplishments are something for other faculty members to aspire to. In academia, our purpose is to make a positive impact on society. We do that by educating students and by creating new knowledge. When our scientists are recognized nationally and internationally at the highest levels, it confirms that impact and encourages us to keep going, to keep pursuing new knowledge.

Also at the Symposium, you can demo Faculty Insight, a new online portal that will connect you to collaborators and funding opportunities. Faculty Insight will replace the Research Expertise Discovery Suite (REDS) with some great new features, including:

–           A targeted database of funding opportunities customized to your expertise;

–           Data from multiple sources for a far more accurate, complete view of Clemson research and of opportunities available;

–           A comprehensive, editable pre-populated research profile for Clemson faculty.

Faculty Insight, developed in partnership with Academic Analytics, will be posted to the Division of Research website and available to anyone with Clemson login credentials on Wednesday. An Academic Analytics representative will be at the Research Symposium to answer your questions and provide an overview of this new platform. I encourage you to come see what opportunities Faculty Insight can unlock for you.

An exciting new feature of the Faculty Insight platform is the ability to find funding opportunities customized to your research expertise. The time to apply for funding is now. Federal budget analysts say the recently approved omnibus spending bill provides the largest year-over-year spending increase for federal research agencies since the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was a significant boon for university research. The American Association for the Advancement of Science estimates this could bring an additional $20 billion in federal R&D spending in fiscal year 2018 (or nearly $177 billion in total).

Universities across the country will also be competing for these investments. At Clemson, we have been very competitive. Since the 2009 Recovery Act, total federal investments in university R&D have been relatively flat. During that time, however, our research expenditures and grant awards have greatly increased. We are consuming a larger piece of the pie, a testament to the strength of your proposals. Let’s continue this momentum and take advantage of this great opportunity.

Go Tigers!

Tanju

Marissa Orr will use her NSF CAREER award to transform academic advising.

Read more.

Peach researchers get $1 million grant to better understand method for growing organic peaches in the Southeast.

Read more.

October 2016

Evolving cultures

It’s easy to get caught up in what we do day-to-day (or day-to-night-to-day) that we sometimes forget to step back and look at how, or why, we do what we do.

This month, I’m pleased to tell you a little bit about three initiatives that do just that. They are aimed at evolving our culture – our methods and motivations.

Women in STEM

In the next week, and for the next several years, you will hear more about an NSF ADVANCE grant for $3 million to increase the number of women in STEM fields.

Sez Atamturktur, in Civil Engineering, spent two years working with more than 50 people on campus to spearhead this grant, with the full support of our provost, Bob Jones.

Congratulations to Dr. Jones, Dr. Atamturktur and the many, many others who helped secure this grant.

At Clemson, the percentage of women in STEM fields is similar to that of many other universities. However, every university can, and should, strive to do more. Clemson’s goal for ADVANCE goes beyond increasing the number of women in STEM fields; it will help our culture evolve into one that embraces, values and actively seeks diversity and inclusion.

Research Safety

In September, Provost Jones created a task force to address the issue of research safety. This was in

response to an initiative of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, which called for all its members (Clemson is one of them) to dedicate time to improving the culture of safety in our laboratories, workshops and other facilities.

Once again, this goes beyond looking at quantifiable data to the more difficult, but equally important, goal of evolving our culture. Safety has to be integral to everything we do.

Tracy Arwood, assistant vice president for Research Compliance, is chairing the task force. She and her committee members will reach out to others across campus to gauge the perception of our research climate. They will identify ways to improve the climate and how we communicate about safety, and they will propose ways to keep us moving forward.

If you are contacted by the safety task force, please assist them at your earlier convenience.

Customer Service

Finally, we recently celebrate two events intended to improve our culture of research customer service. On Sept. 26 the Division of Research office sponsored a pizza party in recognition of Research Administrators’ Day, and on Oct. 7 we sponsored a social hour in our offices in the Strum Thurmond Institute.

The Division of Research, its offices and personnel, are here to help facilitate your work. We invite you to visit with us, and we will continue to do our best to serve you, our customers and constituents, in the most effective and appropriate ways possible. Let us know how we can help you.

Go Tigers!

Tanju

Current models used to predict the survival of species in a warming world might be off target, according to new research by Mike Sears in Biological Sciences that enlisted the help of dozens of spiny lizards in the New Mexico desert.

Read more.

September 2016

It’s been nearly eight months since I assumed the role of vice president for the division of research.

I knew coming in that my job would be a very large task.

But I underestimated how exciting this job can be when we share in achievements. I couldn’t have been prouder of Kerry Smith and Lesly Tamesvari in Biological Sciences, and their EPIC team, when they were awarded Clemson’s second COBRE grant to study deadly pathogens. Or of Stephen Foulger in Materials Science and Engineering when he received an EPSCoR grant, bringing advanced materials to bear on neurological disorders.

I was equally proud that Clemson combined the arts with science and engineering once again at Artisphere, showing Greenville and the surrounding area that art and science belong together, like it is in Todd Anderson’s work. Todd, an assistant professor of printmaking, records glaciers around the world. His work with collaborators to record the receding glaciers in Glacier National Park, in a project called The Last Glacier, is as striking as it is important.

For each primary investigator there are many more faculty members, lab managers, students and staff performing and facilitating research, collaborating across disciplines and across colleges and departments.

It is your hard work – collaborating, finding new opportunities for convergence – that led the Carnegie Foundation to recognize Clemson as an R1 university, among about 80 other universities with the “highest level of research activity.”

Getting R1 designation was an important milestone for Clemson; staying an R1 will take more of the hard work that has helped our research revenues from from an average of about $70 million during the first part of this decade to $109 million in 2016.

ClemsonForward, the University’s strategic plan, has four pillars: research, engagement, academic core and living. REAL. Each pillar is necessary, starting with research.

The work you do is real. It makes a real impact on our city, our region, South Carolina, the United States and the world.

The Division of Research newsletter will be sent monthly by my office. Soon we will have a website with much easier navigation. These are some of our efforts to communicate better — more clearly, with one voice, giving you information you need to know and highlighting our great work. We hope you enjoy the newsletter; I welcome your comments.

Go Tigers!

Tanju

Turtles have a reputation.

“They’re slow, they’re clumsy and the shell just gets in the way of everything.”

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Richard Pak, associate professor in Clemson’s psychology department, has been named director of the Clemson University Human Factors Institute.

Read more.