The Sky’s Not the Limit

Alfredo Fontanini, professor and chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, intimately understands the many issues facing researchers, having experienced them himself, such as when the need arose for new technology his lab couldn’t afford on its own.

“I am interested in taste because it offers the unique opportunity for studying the integration of perception, emotion and decision making. When we taste ice cream, we first assess its sweetness, we then experience its palatability and based on how much we like it, we deliberately decide to continue eating it,” he explained. “Much of the research that my group conducts focuses on understanding how the brain builds the perception of taste and uses this perception to guide decisions.”

Several years ago, Fontanini realized that to answer the questions he was pursuing, he required a new, very expensive technology for imaging neural activity that relied on a 2-photon microscope. Not only would it help him with his work, but it would also allow his lab to run a series of experiments to enter into an entirely new line of research. But it wasn’t in Fontanini’s budget, and he didn’t have the data he needed to write a proposal to obtain new funding to purchase it. Fortunately, he had a very supportive department chair, and with her help and a partnership with another principal investigator, Arianna Maffei (also a professor in Neurobiology), “we were able to pool our resources and purchase the technology,” he said. “That equipment has since become one of the main tools for my research.”   

In areas that are undergoing a technological explosion, such as neuroscience and many others, not being able to afford the latest technology is an issue that happens repeatedly. “If we want to pivot to a new technology, we first have to collect preliminary data and apply for a grant for that piece of equipment. Collecting preliminary data can be quite challenging if the desired piece of equipment is not available within the university or network of collaborators. And even if successful, this process can be quite slow,” Fontanini said.

Funding roadblocks is just one area that Fontanini is now working to address in his new role as vice provost for research and infrastructure, which he assumed last fall. In this position, he works closely with the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) to facilitate the best ways to invest and figure out how to help departments and investigators meet the growing demand for equipment, facilities and staff.

“One of the biggest challenges that every researcher faces is the need to maintain funding to support their research activities,” Fontanini noted. “And yet the funding landscape is unstable. General funding levels vary depending on federal policies, and even in times in which the federal funding is generous, the prioritized areas may shift. Researchers must be ready to jump from one area to another to capitalize on those opportunities or to follow novel research directions.”

 One way the university is helping faculty is by giving them more support in preparing their requests for funding. “Adding staff with expertise in navigating the funding landscape and proposal development will help faculty teams really focus on preparing highly competitive proposals,” said Rich Reeder, vice president for research.

Two new specialists have already been added to OVPR’s existing eight-person staff in the Office of Proposal Development (OPD) for that very purpose. Specialists and coordinators help principal investigators with tasks such as understanding the requirements of a funding opportunity announcement, preparing the required administrative documents, editing and designing the project narrative, developing management plans and broader impacts statements, building collaborations with other institutions, among many other tasks. Eight more positions to support the sponsored programs and grant management will be added in the next year to aid faculty further in submitting their proposals and manage their awards.

“We want faculty to feel encouraged to pursue large, center-scale opportunities and not be dissuaded or overwhelmed by the heavy administrative requirements that come with that territory,” said Nina Maung, associate vice president for research. “The ability to hire more staff in OVPR will allow us to increase the number of faculty, proposals, awards and institutional strategic initiatives that we support.”

Yet easing the funding application process is only one part of the equation. Faculty not only need help to write, apply for and manage grants — a long and complicated process that takes them away from time in their labs — but, in a federal landscape where cross-disciplinary projects are favored, they also require guidance in finding collaborators to have the best chance of winning those grants.

Enter the “tiger teams.”

THE EYE OF THE TIGER
“What we’ve learned over time is that if we wait for a public announcement on a federal funding opportunity, it is often too late for us to put together a team to be competitive,” Reeder said. “We decided to construct teams of subject matter experts — in small groups so they’d be nimble — to prepare our faculty to respond to funding opportunities before they’re announced.”

The tiger teams at one of their first meetings from last summer.

Last spring, OVPR and the Office of the Provost initiated a pilot program to create these small cross-disciplinary groups, known as tiger teams (see section below), to help plan ahead to compete for new funding. Each team has four to six faculty members from different departments and an OPD representative to provide administrative support.

The teams worked together throughout the fall to outline SBU’s strengths in relation to possible federal funding opportunities in 10 key areas as identified in the United States Innovation and Competition Act, areas strongly aligned with growth in the National Science Foundation (a major funding source). This spring, they will share what they learned with the campus through a series of town halls.

“We asked them to use their expertise to forecast the most likely opportunities to come up next,” said Reeder. The teams provided their reports and predictions to OVPR in December, and now the university is ready to pursue new grants as soon as federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and NASA, announce their intentions later this spring.

Although much of the teams’ focus was on asset mapping, the insights gained will benefit individual investigators and will also provide a road map for future investments in strategic areas, Reeder noted. And while their initial work is done, the teams may be only getting started.

“The hope is that this effort is going to position us aggressively for new funding opportunities. More importantly, this initiative will help us connect researchers around areas of common interest and create new collaborations, new groups that work together,” Fontanini said. “If you bring together very talented researchers with complementary expertise who are interested in the same topics and if you facilitate those connections, then funding will follow as a natural consequence.”

To further encourage SBU investigators to pursue research in the areas investigated by tiger teams, the Office of the Provost has created, in collaboration with OVPR, a new seed grant program (internal funding often used to kickstart projects). “The Provost’s Venture Fund (ProFund) will help to coalesce teams in one of the identified areas of strength, giving scientists the ability to collect preliminary data or conduct preparatory activities that they may need for their proposals,” Fontanini explained. The five grants will be awarded this semester after an internal competition. “The tiger team initiative started from an internal effort of intelligence and due diligence,” he added. “Now it’s starting to spread out within the university. And we’re seeding it with financial support.”

Outside the areas represented by the tiger teams, which are now being expanded to biomedical sciences, the Office of the Provost is developing “a number of new and ongoing initiatives designed to stimulate research in the arts, social sciences and humanities,” said Maung. “Support will be provided jointly by OVPR and the Office of the Provost in the form of seed grants, mentoring awards and incentives for interdisciplinary team projects. And we are currently considering other thematic areas for future sets of tiger teams that could include these disciplines.”

The seed grant program in the arts, humanities and social sciences will provide three grants this spring, with each grant awarding up to $20,000 to support creative efforts. The other grant program will support the development of new mentoring mechanisms for senior faculty interested in developing programs for early and mid-career faculty interested in applying for  grants from Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts and other programs. Finally, two $25,000 grants will be awarded to promote the development of new teams to explore interdisciplinary areas of scholarly work, such as digital futures/ethical artificial intelligence, global migration and sustainability.

GROWING PAINS
While the tiger teams and other initiatives are helping with funding, another critical area on which Fontanini is concentrating is ensuring that faculty have the best facilities in which to conduct their research. On an aging campus, that’s the elephant in the room.

“Our infrastructure is aging. Many of our buildings are several decades old,” Fontanini stated. “And that impacts our ability to do research. If cold rooms where we need to put our chemical agents can’t function properly, or if there are electrical problems, these are major obstacles to our research. So it is extremely important to assess the health of our research infrastructures, and also identify effective practices for maintaining, repairing and renovating our facilities.”

Students work in the lab of Eden Figueroa, quantum information technology researcher, a member of the Quantum Information tiger team.

Again, teamwork will be key to solving these complicated issues. Fontanini is collaborating closely with Facilities and Services to engage an external partner in conducting a detailed survey to determine the health and quality of the space on campus; identifying available swing space or procuring space via trailers, if needed; and developing a timeline as part of the long-term planning process for upcoming renovations. Several companies have bid on the proposal, and one will soon be chosen to start the review process, which should begin later this semester.

“There are incredibly complex logistical problems as our buildings are aging — and we’re entering a phase where we need to renovate several of them,” Fontanini said. “We need to make these improvements in a way that is efficient and at the same time extremely low impact for our researchers. And that is going to take time, thoughtful consideration and faculty input.”

The Office of the Provost has also launched the Strategic Resource Council as a way to give faculty more avenues to voice their concerns on renovations, funding and other issues. Most important, it gives faculty more opportunities to be part of the broader, campuswide conversation on research strategy. “We thought the best way to begin those conversations was to bring together all the associate deans for research from across the university,” Fontanini said. “And then to have ongoing conversations about the challenges that researchers face. The group has already met a few times and now we’re starting to meet in smaller groups, because it became quite clear that each school has different strengths and interests, and that smaller groups are really best to hone in on how to help all our schools and colleges to achieve their full potential.

“We want faculty to know we will continue to listen to them and hear their ideas and concerns,” he added. “We will do everything we can to provide faculty with the support, technology and space to create new knowledge, inspire our students, and help achieve their research and academic goals.”  

To learn more about the next stage for research growth, please visit stonybrook.edu/acceleratingresearch