Kansas State University

RSCAD and Regulations

Our office is keeping tabs on how executive orders and memos will affect RSCAD and research administration at K-State and beyond. Read our statement from Tuesday’s K-State Today, and please contact us if you have questions.

Cancer Insights

Sumita Bhaduri-McIntosh, associate professor from the departments of pediatrics and molecular genetics and microbiology at the School of Medicine and Cancer Center at Stony Brook University, will present “Insights into cancer through Epstein-Barr virus” on Friday, February 3 at 4:00 p.m. in Ackert 221. Refreshments will precede the seminar in Ackert 225. If you would like to visit with the speaker, please contact Sherry Fleming at sdflemin@ksu.edu

Spring Training

Find out about Faculty Development Award and University Small Grant programs at information sessions on February 9 at 3:00 and February 20 at 3:30. Both sessions are in Union 207.  More details are available on our events calendar- note the full slate of training sessions and workshops while you're there.

2017 Research Showcase

K-State RSCAD is hitting the road this spring! Register by March 1 to join the team headed to K-State Olathe on May 17.

• Represent K-State to Greater KC companies
• Meet many possible collaborators in a short time
• Establish new funding streams
• Find out more about what your colleagues are doing

Two early career opportunities were released in the past week. Visit the Funding Connection for more information about these and other opportunities.

• The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) CAREER program is a foundation-wide opportunity that offers NSF’s most prestigious awards for faculty members beginning their independent careers. The intent of the program is to provide stable support at a sufficient level and duration to enable awardees to develop careers not only as outstanding researchers but also as educators demonstrating commitment to teaching, learning, and dissemination of knowledge.
• The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) New Investigator/Early Career program provides support for non-tenured assistant professors to conduct applied research on topics relevant to DOJ’s Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) and/or Office of Science and Technology (OST). ORE’s primary areas of interest include but are not limited to: social science research on criminal justice systems (e.g., courts, policing, corrections); violence and victimization (e.g., victims of crime, human trafficking, bias crime); and crime control and prevention (e.g., school safety, firearms, gangs). OST’s primary areas of interest include but are not limited to: the development and application of technology to criminal justice issues, understanding technology’s impact in the field, and exploring policy-related research questions with regards to technology use and impact. 

NIH Implementation of the Interim-RPPR while a Renewal Application is Under Consideration

Effective February 9, 2017, if the recipient organization has submitted a renewal application on or before the date by which a Final Research Performance Progress Report (Final-RPPR) would be required for the current competitive segment, then submission of an "Interim-RPPR" via eRA Commons is now required.   Based on this requirement, the NIH will discontinue the policy for renewal applications whereby, “whether funded or not,” the progress report contained in the renewal application may serve in lieu of a separate final progress report.

NSF Profile of Early Career Doctorates: 2015

In the U.S. workforce, early career doctorates—persons receiving their first doctorate within the past 10 years—are a diverse group that includes both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens trained either in the United States or abroad. The Early Career Doctorates Survey (ECDS), sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation, gathers in-depth information about such individuals who are employed at U.S. master's- and doctorate-granting academic institutions, federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), or the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program (NIH IRP). The statistics in this report are from the 2015 ECDS pilot study (see the Data Sources and Limitations section for more information about the pilot). Most of this estimated 228,700 early career doctorates population were employed in academic institutions (96%), and the majority earned their first doctoral degree in the sciences (70%). Approximately 19% earned their first doctoral degree from a foreign academic institution. When asked where they planned to work in the next 10 years, 69% of the early career doctorates planned to work only in the United States, 27% planned to work in both the United States and abroad, and 3% planned to work abroad.

NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research’s (EPSCoR) International Space Station (ISS) Flight Opportunity Seeks Reviewers

The NASA HQ Office of Education has asked the NASA Research and Education Support Services (NRESS) to seek persons to evaluate proposals submitted in response to the FY 2017 NASA Cooperative Agreement Notice announced by NASA Headquarters’ Office of Education on December 5, 2016.  Detailed information regarding NASA EPSCoR proposal requirements and evaluation criteria are contained in the solicitation posted by NRESS on the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES). NRESS will post all proposal assignments on NSPIRES and your reviews must be submitted electronically via NSPIRES. NSPIRES can be accessed at http://nspires.nasaprs.com, click on Solicitations, then open announcement number NNH17ZHA001C to view the EPSCoR solicitation.  Please view the solicitation to determine your interest in serving as an EPSCoR peer reviewer and respond at nasa.epscor@nasaprs.com.  Please also register at http://nspires.nasaprs.com and indicate your contact information and research area of interest and/or expertise as soon as possible after receiving this email. If you volunteer and register in NSPIRES, you will be contacted during the second week in April to finalize proposal assignments. The online review period is currently scheduled for March 10 – April 4, 2017.   It is anticipated that reviewers will be asked to review one to three proposals of approximately 15-20 pages in length. Non-civil servants will receive an honorarium of $100 for the first proposal reviewed and $50 for each additional proposal fully reviewed and submitted online to NSPIRES by the close of the review period.

Freeze on Federal Activities Gives Scientists a Chill

There’s a lot that’s unknown about the new Trump administration's policies, and some of them already appear to be shifting. Administration officials initially spoke of a freeze on research grants at several agencies, including the EPA and Department of Agriculture, along with a ban on tweets or other social-media comments by agency officials, and a halt in any regulatory changes, even those already approved. Then, under pressure from members of Congress and an array of critics outside the government, some of those changes are reportedly getting walked back, now described as temporary, or clarified to be less sweeping than they initially appeared.

Better Federal Coordination Needed to Protect Nation’s Food Supply From Biological Attacks

Greater coordination between the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security is needed to help prevent a biological attack on the U.S. agriculture industry that threatens the nation’s food supply, a panel of experts on agrodefense said last week. The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense hosted a meeting at Kansas State University to discuss the challenges and solutions in defending the nation’s agriculture industry from chemical and biological threats.

The Internet of Things Comes to the Lab

The IoT is the idea that it is not just computers that can be hooked up to the Internet, but everyday objects as well. In so doing, they acquire new functionality, says Felix Wortmann, scientific director of the Bosch IoT Lab at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, which studies the IoT and its impact on business. Add Wi-Fi and a motion sensor to a light bulb, he says, and you have a remote alarm system; add Wi-Fi to a stereo system, and you can control your music from your phone.

Scientists ‘Partly to Blame’ for Skepticism of Evidence in Policymaking, Says AAAS CEO

A U.S. president needs more than access to high-quality technical experts to deal with the inevitable science-related global crisis—a new outbreak of avian flu in Southeast Asia, say, or a tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the Chilean coast—that could occur at any time, says AAAS CEO Rush Holt. The president also must believe that scientific evidence is useful in setting government policy. But Holt is worried that the new Trump administration doesn’t subscribe to that second condition. And scientists are partly to blame for what he sees as the growing devaluation of evidence by U.S. policymakers, Holt suggested this past Saturday in remarks at the winter meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C.

Venice's Grand Gallerie Dell'Accademia Will State a Guston Show During the Biennale

Every two years, when the Venice Biennale opens, the museums, galleries, and foundations of La Serenissima compete for attention, aiming to mount their finest shows. Today the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia—that trove of Old Master painting, rich with Canaletto, Mantegna, Titian, and many more—revealed its auspicious-sounding plan: “Philip Guston and the Poets,” a survey of a half-century of the artist’s work that will include 50 paintings and 25 drawings, charting his interests in relation to those of five poets: D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Eugenio Montale, and T. S. Eliot.

First Human-Pig Chimeras Created, Sparking Hopes for Transplantable Organs — and Debate

Pig embryos that had been injected with human stem cells when they were only a few days old began to grow organs containing human cells, scientists reported on Thursday, an advance that promises — or threatens — to bring closer the routine production of creatures that are part human and part something else.