Today, GIS is a rapidly expanding, $2 billion industry in the U.S. and UB has established itself nationally as a leader in the field, the backbone of which is software that sorts and uses data pertaining to space and location.

UB is one of three universities that are sites for the National Science Foundation-funded National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Last month, the NSF awarded to the university a $2.2 million grant to support a new multidisciplinary, doctoral-level concentration in GIS. And more than 50 UB faculty members in a number of departments are conducting research that relates to GIS in areas ranging from analyzing neighborhood crime patterns, to developing suburban deer-management solutions, to examining problems in caring for the elderly.

While a major focus of research at UB, GIS is only one of some 85-90 disciplines in which 700-800 faculty members are project directors for externally funded research that in fiscal year 1998 totaled nearly $121.6 million.

Faced with seemingly endless choices-and yet finite resources of its own-how does UB focus its efforts when it comes to investing in research?

The research mission of New York State's largest public university is guided by concerns for the well-being of the state's citizens, as well as the university's unique capability to address the state's high-priority problems and issues, according to Vice President for Research Dale M. Landi.

Among the defining factors are UB's location and the needs of Western New York's residents.

Buffalo's location in the Great Lakes basin, for example, predisposes the university to the research being conducted and coordinated by the Great Lakes Program, devoted to the development, evaluation and synthesis of scientific and technical knowledge on the Great Lakes ecosystem in support of public education and policy formation.

However, by far the most critical factor determining the university's research focus is its faculty members and their areas of expertise, Landi adds. In addition to being educators, faculty members at a major research university are expected to be cutting-edge researchers with the ability to secure funding to support their work, to attract top graduate and doctoral students, and to help elevate the university's national profile. While faculty at a four-year college teach students about advances in knowledge, students at major research institutions like UB are taught by faculty who are making those advances.

Hiring new faculty members, and later determining whether they are granted tenure, are critical decisions that shape a research university. "It's an enormous investment," says Landi, and, in turn, places major responsibilities on the institution.

"We need to provide them with an environment where they can succeed," he adds. "They need to perceive that they're at a place where they have a good chance at success. That means providing facilities and equipment for research, and administrative services that they need to sustain their research programs."

On the other hand, "resources are limited, and we can't afford to give everyone everything they want," notes David J. Triggle, dean of the Graduate School and associate vice provost for graduate education. In some fields, such as the physical sciences, he adds, setting up a researcher in a proper lab can cost the university in the neighborhood of a half million dollars.

Because of such costs, UB needs to define the educational and research areas it wants to pursue, and to "encourage departments to focus their hiring on those areas," says Triggle.

In recent years, the university has provided researchers with "seed funds" to help launch new research endeavors by awarding small, one-time grants on a competitive basis to faculty teams through the Multidisciplinary Pilot Project Program. The program encourages researchers to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries to demonstrate preliminary results that they then can present in proposals to external funding sources, a process that leverages their university grants-which typically range from $18,000 to $20,000-to obtain more substantial external funding.

The program has been extraordinarily successful. For every dollar the university invested in 1994-the first year of the program-researchers received $14 in external funding. One of the first seed projects, funded for $19,100, earlier this year won a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"Seed funding gives researchers the capital to enable them to explore new ideas and prepare proposals that are competitive at the national level," says Landi.

And competition at that level can be extremely stiff, particularly for funding for basic research. While the NIH, for example, has more research funding available than it ever has in the past, greater numbers of researchers are competing for those funds.

"If we don't get in there, we'll lose out," says Michael E. Bernardino, vice president for health affairs. UB's medical school alone, he notes, must increase its external research funding by $25 million over the next five years just to maintain its state funding under the state's new resource allocation methodology.

Such mandates, as well as the extremely competitive funding environment at the national level, increasingly make collaboration a given when it comes to research.

"Internal collaboration is more important than it's ever been," says Landi. "Societal problems and issues-issues paramount to the people of the State of New York, as well as nationally and globally-don't come neatly packaged within a discipline. It's important to find a way for talented people to work together on these problems."

Triggle notes: "We need to pool our visions and resources, collaborate and share. Going it alone is not the way to do it." Collaboration, he adds, includes work across departments within the university, as well as with colleagues at affiliated hospitals and institutions, such as Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and other universities.

It also can mean sharing expensive equipment that one institution alone cannot afford to purchase.

"We need to have good institutional mechanisms that allow researchers from various disciplines to work together," says Landi. The payoffs for such efforts can be very large. For example, UB's new multidisciplinary, doctoral-level concentration in GIS, which attracted $2.2 million in NSF funding, is a collaboration among seven academic departments.

Research in the health sciences, in particular, will require a "synergy among departments" that has not been existed before, says Bernardino. "We've got to move people toward thinking and working toward a common goal."

But working toward a shared goal is not always easy, Triggle admits. "It's not going to be that easy to be in agreement," he adds. "Everyone says, 'My area is much more important than anyone else's.'"

Triggle says that that's why Provost Thomas E. Headrick's academic planning document, outlining changes-both administrative and philosophical-that UB must undergo if it is to become a premier public-research university, also must serve as the strategic plan that will allow UB to focus its research resources.

"Our research policy needs to be run out of the provost's office," he says. "That's the place where decisions have to come from, with lots of advice" from the decanal level.

External collaboration-with business and industry, as well as with other universities and affiliated hospitals and institutions-also is integral to the success of UB's research initiatives.

Industry, keenly aware that it no longer can remain competitive by relying solely on in-house research and development, is turning for assistance to research universities like UB. Praxair, one of the world's largest suppliers of industrial gases, and Enidine, which manufactures and markets industrial shock absorbers, seismic dampers and vibration isolators, have agreements with the university that allow them to take advantage of UB's advanced technologies and scientific expertise.

The importance of collaboration with other universities is underscored by the internationally recognized success of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), which is a consortium of leading academic institutions. In its 12-year history, MCEER successfully has leveraged $56 million in NSF funds to attract additional support totaling more than $120 million, including more than $26 million in matching funds from New York State, for research, education and outreach programs.

Because government coffers are not bottomless, major research universities are placing more emphasis on development efforts to identify potential funding from private and public foundations and agencies, as well as the corporate world.

A prime example is the partnership that has evolved between the university and Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. UB's reputation as a center for pioneering research in the treatment and prevention of stroke was bolstered two years ago when Toshiba established here the university's Toshiba Stroke Research Center with a $3.6 million gift of advanced image-guidance equipment. Just last month, it increased its commitment to UB with a three-year, $500,000 grant to further the center's work on the dynamics of blood flow and improving the ability to view structures in the brain while decreasing X-ray exposure.

Landi stresses that UB's research strengths are not limited to the health and physical sciences. He cites work being done by faculty members in information sciences, biomedical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, advanced materials and environmental sciences as areas of "special strength."

"We have great strengths in the behavioral sciences, as well," Landi says. Psychology and sociology, for example, "are important areas of research for the university where there are fewer opportunities for gaining external support, but they are no less important than the other areas and require a different approach if they are to flourish in the university environment."

Law, urban development, higher education, the arts, Landi continues, "have different requirements and issues that need to be addressed....All of a sudden, because of the tremendous advances in information science over the last 15 years, we're faced with revolutions in the way we conduct research in the arts and humanities."

What should UB do to encourage and maintain excellence in research?

Go back to the basics, says Landi.

The university must be disciplined in recruiting and promoting faculty "because it's the faculty who conduct that research who are the engine of UB's research enterprise.

"If you do that less well than you could, then research here will be less than it could be."

Investment in research, Landi stresses, must be "continual," including the investment in the faculty.

"You have to expect some faculty to leave because they'll be highly sought by other institutions. You can't retain all faculty members, no matter how good your retention efforts are." When outstanding researchers leave, he adds, UB must be committed to replacing them with "excellent, mid-level faculty."

And as important to the university as external funding is, a sense of balance is equally necessary where research is concerned.

"We live in an age where it's unrealistic to try to maintain a major research university without large sources of external support, including research support," Landi says.

"However, we can't allow ourselves to be driven solely by the search for external dollars and we can't measure success by the dollar size of external support because there are many areas where external support is achievable without large dollars and they're equally important. We need people to maintain balance and perspective in a research university when they look for excellence."