Armed with "an enormous amount of information about how to write grants, get grants (and) get money," Jaylan Turkkan, UB's new vice president for research, outlined her goals to catapult the university back into the top tier of research institutions at the Oct. 18 meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.

	Turkkan

Hailing from the research-intensive National Institutes of Health and The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where there exist "enormous expectations about.research and being savvy about how one goes about getting funding for your ideas," Turkkan vowed to put UB back on the map by infusing the university with the sense that "We are research."

"The potential is obviously there, and we're already doing stuff in the top tier," she said, noting that the faculty's collective thinking needs to shift more toward that direction. "I can't do all this alone."

Her multi-themed plan largely focuses on grooming UB's investigators and inventors-new and old-to become more knowledgeable in their solicitation of research dollars and encourages a more cooperative, proactive atmosphere at the university.

Toward that end, Joseph Mollendorf, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Research and Creative Activity, announced his plan to conduct a survey "to find out what's on the minds of the researchers."

"What I hope to do with this committee is to try to be a conduit between the researchers and the rest of the university," he said.

Working with Turkkan, Mollendorf said he hoped to "generate some light" with the survey.

"I'm looking for something that will really have the researchers engaged and say what's on their mind," he said. "I think that's got to be the first step...to see what can be done."

Turkkan focused first on the need for true interdisciplinary support. Comparing disciplines to elements of a lava lamp-"(they) come together, merge, coalesce, fragment, split off...this is the way science works"-she said cooperative ventures can be shaky in that disciplines "could be productively working together, and there aren't the structures there that support that."

"Some years ago.organized research units like centers and institutes (were) formed at UB," she said. "I do need a lot of feedback...about how we can make sure that they're hotbeds of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary synthesis and integration, and ultimately, that they support their own operations."

Apologizing for her "Hopkins mentality," Turkkan dismissed the idea of subsidized centers, saying research entities at UB must be able to hold their own.

"The best science is not subsidized," she said. "If you can't support the work, then it's not valued by your peers."

Robert Baier, professor of oral diagnostic sciences, agreed with Turkkan's assessment.

"There's nothing to apologize (for) with regard to the Johns-Hopkins attitude-that's what we're missing," he said. "There's no reason why we can't do-and be funded for-top-shelf research. We just haven't been running an efficient shop."

Turkkan also said she wants to emphasize new researchers at UB.

"I think they're our investment in the future," she said. "They need to be nurtured, mentored.we need to start thinking about the next generation and really fostering their development as scientists."

The third part of her plan-the "Savvy P.I. Project"-underscores the need for researchers to master the grant-writing process.

"Not just new investigators, but all of you, I want to infuse with a sense of 'I know the score,'" she said. "I don't want anyone here to not get a grant because they didn't know how (to) influence the process."

She pointed to programs at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Research Institute on Addictions that pick up the cost of a grant pre-review and cut down on time and dollars lost as examples UB might follow. She also spoke of instituting a mentor program, like one she helped develop at the NIH, where new investigators would be linked with faculty members just above their rank.

Turkkan also shared her plans in tending to the business end of research. Announcing that she will serve as co-chair of the UB Business Alliance along with Mark H. Karwan, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Turkkan said she will focus on "the applied science, the marketing, of what we do."

Samuel Schack, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, implored Turkkan not to approach UB research in terms of the hard sciences only.

"Sciences may be where most of the money is, but they aren't where all the activity is," he said.

Recalling the 1980s when the university's emphasis was heavily on scientific research, Schack said he "would hate to see this university go back to that.because it will cause, as it did before, a tremendous undervalue of a tremendous number of contributions."