Mixed news on research
Dollars flat, but time is good to seek new funding, Triggle says

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

The bad news is that UB's research dollars have been essentially flat for the past few years; the good news is that it is an excellent time now to be seeking new funding opportunities.

Those were the messages presented to the UB Council on May 3 by Provost David J. Triggle; Iain Hay, associate provost for research and professor of microbiology, and Bruce A. Holm, senior associate dean of medicine and professor of pediatrics and pharmacology.

Triggle referred to UB's "extremely ambitious" goal of doubling its research support over the next five years.

"Fortunately, this is a felicitous time to be ramping up our efforts," said Triggle, pointing to a spate of announcements about increased research funding from traditional sources, including an expected doubling of funding from the National Institutes of Health over the next few years, as well as increased funds from the private sector.

The provost cited the efforts of the offices of State and Federal Relations as being extremely effective in working with governmental bodies.

Triggle distributed to council members a memo he wrote this spring outlining UB's sponsored programs and research support. The memo noted that, despite some very real successes, such as the Howard Hughes grant to the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the establishment of the Center for Computational Research, "the overall bottom line is that our sponsored-program volume is not going up and that of our competitors is. We are losing this race at a time of comparatively generous availability of research funding."

UB's sponsored program expenditures totaled $80.5 million in 1999-2000, a slight decline from the $81.6 million in 1994-95.

Triggle proposed creating immediately an internal venture-capital fund of at least $1 million-which should be increased quickly to $5 million-in addition to the seed-funding programs already in place.

The purpose of such a fund, he said, would be to launch new initiatives in the areas the university has defined in its Mission Review Statement:

n Molecular and biomedical sciences

n Computer science and information technologies including bioinformatics and media

n Materials science

n Environment and infrastructure

In addition, "the cheapest thing we can do is to keep good people here," Hay said, noting that UB has been criticized for not making vigorous efforts to retain faculty.

He pointed to recent examples where faculty members who were being recruited by the University of Florida and the University of Chicago accepted packages from UB to stay.

In response to a complaint among faculty members that they needed to be more a part of the research decisions that are made throughout the university, a Faculty Research Advisory Committee has been established, chaired by Hay.

Hay also noted that UB has been having increasing success in attracting key researchers from other top-ranked institutions.

Hay added that UB must make greater use of its development office in seeking new opportunities. He pointed to three recent successes generated in conjunction with that office: $1 million from the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust for research on infectious diseases, $1 million from the Keck Foundation to conduct research on cell protein studies implicated in diseases, and $4 million from the Howard Hughes Foundation to establish a Center for Single-Molecule Biophysics and a Center for Genomics and Proteomics.

The push for boosting research support also has prompted what Holm called "a strategic change in faculty demographics."

He explained that "productivity profiles" had been completed of all medical-school faculty members. Holm estimated that if 75 new faculty hires were added in place of those current faculty members who were contributing neither to the institution's teaching or research missions, and each of the 75 generated a "reasonable average" of $275,000 in research funds, the medical school's level of support would be boosted by $20 million.

"The more successful we become in generating indirect costs, the more successful we'll be in knocking down the need for state support," he said.