Research Grants
Many outside of academia consider summer – when the majority of students generally return home – like the days of elementary school when summer break meant, well, a break. Internally, though, we often think of summer as being the time when faculty research moves into high speed, when all of the research that did not get accomplished during the academic year is scheduled to be done.
Whereas many faculty members have no teaching or a very light teaching load in the summer, the truth is that the Mendoza faculty who have research as part of their duties (namely research faculty and tenure-track and tenured faculty) conduct research throughout the year, and especially during summer when other activities slow down.
Research is fundamental to Notre Dame’s mission, where we have a “responsibility to advance knowledge in a search for truth through original inquiry and publication. This responsibility engages the faculty and students in all areas of the University, but particularly in graduate and professional education and research.” Conducting this research, though, is also expensive. Very expensive.
The College supports research in many ways, including providing data sets, infrastructure, equipment, personnel and opportunity (i.e., time) to conduct research. I’d like to use this column to highlight sponsored research at Mendoza – which is more colloquially known as a grant – and to emphasize that grants do provide a potential path for researchers who have specific needs outside of what the College can provide.
All grants have certain restrictions on what the funds can be used for, but they often provide a great deal of flexibility for the faculty. For example, depending on the particulars of the grant, one could hire a research scientist, purchase data not provided by the College, collect data beyond that which the College can support (e.g., via the Mendoza Behavioral Lab), fund post-docs for collaborative research, support dissemination of findings (e.g., via conference presentation/travel) and provide equipment (e.g., computing nodes), among other things.
The College has a support structure for grants that some may not be familiar with. Further, we have worked on new initiatives that make pursuing an external grant more appealing. Please reach out to me if you would like to discuss sponsored research or gifts.
A related but distinct avenue for research support are gifts, which can be bestowed by individuals or companies. Gifts allow a researcher the flexibility to pursue avenues of research that might be difficult or impossible otherwise, but do not come from the same process or usually the same restrictions.
Grants are a necessity in the College of Science and the College of Engineering, and in some of the areas of the social sciences within the College of Arts and Letters. There is often an expectation that funding to support one’s research comes almost exclusively from external sources.
Historically, Mendoza has neither encouraged nor discouraged the pursuit of grants, although some faculty members have successfully pursued them. The benefits are great for those who receive funding, but seeking external funding can be a hard-fought battle, often taking multiple attempts. For example, the success rate of federal grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of (Mental) Health or foundations such as the Lilly Endowment or the Templeton Foundation can be in the low single digits. Other avenues for funding are from companies with specific research calls (e.g., Facebook or eBay).
All of that said, I want to make clear that Notre Dame and the College have a strong infrastructure to support sponsored research. Notre Dame Research (NDR) provides pre-award support services so that much of the heavy administrative burden is removed from the faculty member (and the various forms and documentation done by experts). Internally, I provide whatever assistance is needed in terms of research agreements, MOUs, approval of resources, and so on. Mendoza’s NDR pre-award specialist Allison DeBlock can address any questions about the specifics of a grant application (and help with all of the paperwork necessary for submission, such as budgets).
Examples of Mendoza researchers who have recently pursued grants and been successful include:
- Corey Angst in collaboration with colleagues from Computer Science and Engineering on a federally funded project about identification of social transmission and evasion of COVID-19. This project combines computer science methods of location-based instrumentation in an information technology infrastructure for tracking close contacts. It is an exciting project that will have implications beyond COVID-19.
- Matt Bloom has been a very successful grant writer, along with collaborator and M&O colleague Manuela Casti Yeagley. Matt’s work on wellbeing and flourishing in the workplace have garnered major funding from two foundations: the Wellbeing at Work from the Templeton Religion Trust; and the Flourishing in Ministry from the Lilly Endowment, which Matt is well known for and has been highly publicized. Matt’s work has also led to the WorkWell app for enabling users to discover and engage with daily practices to boost their well-being and measure their progress, complete with a personalized wellbeing profile based on research.
- Ahmed Abbasi received funding from the National Science Foundation for a project using social media to examine adverse health outcomes.
- Ahmed Abbasi, David Dobolyi, and I have been funded by eBay to evaluate machine learning and related models in the context of digital experimentation, in collaboration with Sriram Somanchi.
- Zifeng Zhao received funding from the National Science Foundation along with a colleague from Purdue to advance time-series methods (e.g., for modeling financial and other time-varying data).
- Scott Nestler, Martin Barron, Seth Berry and John Lalor were funded by the ACC to study student-athlete well-being in the face of COVID-19.
- Nick Berente obtained funding through the federal government to work on a project about integration and enabling national cyberinfrastructure with community involvement.
A strong research community, with or without external funding, is a vital part of Mendoza’s history and to its future. Brother Leo Ryan, who served as dean from 1975 to 1980, said research “imparts a way of looking at the world, a thirst for knowledge, a desire to be engaged in the latest developments of a discipline.”
To close, let me say how thankful I am for all of our faculty and staff members who support our research efforts. Please know that I am most certainly open to hearing about other ways in which we can improve our research infrastructure to facilitate publication or to discuss grants and the incentives available for external funding of research.
Best wishes,
Ken
Ken Kelley, Ph.D.
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research
Edward F. Sorin Society Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research
Edward F. Sorin Society Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations