Kansas State University

Welcome back from wherever you spent your holidays.  I enjoyed time with my family - both daughters came to Manhattan — and the K-State family at the Texas Bowl.  One daughter came back with exciting news — I get to help plan a wedding, or more precisely, I get to pay for it. And I thought startup negotiations were tough.

I also spent a few days traveling to the east cost to visit with scientists at Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the facility being replaced by NBAF, to discuss transitioning to Manhattan and collaborating with K-State.

I also spent part of the break refining our strategic plan refresh activities.  Many of you have heard me talk about how the Office of the VPR plans to help K-State meet it’s 2025 goal of becoming a Top 50 public research university.  As a facilitating office, we have been focusing on developing strategies in five key support areas of RSCAD where our office will provide:

• Investments, strategies, and business models
• A comprehensive grant management program
• Comprehensive training in safe, effective, ethical research practices
• Leadership in technology transfer and corporate partnerships
• Leadership and partnership to promote a diverse RSCAD environment

We will be providing updates about our strategic refresh throughout the semester and inviting your feedback and input.

On January 10, we held the first quarterly joint meeting of all campus research administrators. Research administration engages scores of staff across the university in departments, colleges, and central university leadership units and represents a team of talented folks who facilitate the research enterprise. I had the pleasure of addressing the first meeting, providing updates on our strategic refresh, and setting the tone for collaborative engagement among our many units. We also heard updates about the electronic Research Administration project, research talent databases, and communication strategies that support RSCAD.

On Tuesday, President Myers and I shared a letter with the campus community introducing you to a project that we are undertaking this year to engage in a self-study about how K-State is engaged with innovation and economic prosperity (IEP) as part of our RSCAD portfolio.  Between now and early May, we will be surveying internal and external stakeholders, engaging these communities in dialog in facilitated open forums, and developing a report about our strengths and areas for improvement as an IEP engaged university. We invite you to follow our progress and identify ways that you can participate. 

New Year, New Format

We've redesigned RSCAD Momentum. Look for new voices and features in the coming weeks. Miss the news clips? The Division of Communications and Marketing produces "K-State in the news today." The page contains a downloadable spreadsheet of K-State news mentions. 

NIH 2017 Regional Seminars

NIH offers seminars for researchers who are new to the agency's grants process. The seminars are highly recommended by K-State faculty members who have attended in the past. 2017 opportunities will be in New Orleans in May and in Baltimore in October. Read more.

University Research Forum Virtual Meeting Series

K-State participates in EAB's University Research Forum. Anyone at K-State may register. Five sessions in January, February, and March cover creation of grand challenge research teams, cluster hiring, finding corporate research partners, and other topics. Find the details and register for the webinars.

Better Living Through Chemistry

The Chemistry Storeroom has a new website. It's in development, but more information about chemicals and other products the storeroom sells is coming soon. 

2017 Research Showcase

K-State RSCAD is hitting the road this spring! Mark your calendar to head to K-State Olathe on May 17. Read more about the event or find the basics and register.

Two National Institutes of Health instrumentation programs were recently announced. The first — High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program IS10) — encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems that cost at least $600,001. The maximum award is $2,000,000. Types of instruments supported include, but are not limited to, X-ray diffraction systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and confocal microscopes, cell-sorters, and biomedical imagers.

The second program — Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program (S10) — encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems that cost at least $50,000 with a the maximum award is $600,000. Types of instruments supported include, but are not limited to, X-ray diffractometers, mass and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and light microscopes, cell sorters, and biomedical imagers.

For more information about individual programs and for applications, please e-mail research@k-state.edu or call 785-532-6195.

NIH: Take a Look at Our New Application Instructions

If you take a look at the December release of our application guide, you will see that we’ve worked really hard to simplify the language and presentation of our application instructions.

Adam Ruben’s tongue-in-cheek column about the common difficulties and frustrations of reading a scientific paper broadly resonated among ScienceCareers readers. Many of you have come to us asking for more (and more serious) advice on how to make sense of the scientific literature, so we’ve asked a dozen scientists at different career stages and in a broad range of fields to tell us how they do it.

The 12 Key Science Moments of 2016

Zika, SpaceX, Greenland sharks, and more. 

The New Face of U.S. Science

Gary McDowell, Misty Hugeness  and colleagues present census data showing how the biomedical workforce is fundamentally different to those of past generations — academia should study the trends, and adapt.

At Lab That Conquered Ebola, an Emphasis on Creativity

Gary P. Kobinger, a former chief of special pathogens at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, credits a climate there that fostered cooperation among scientists, rather than competition, for the international effort’s success.

Global Health Check

How has the world’s health changed in your lifetime? Enter your birth year and find out.

2016 Global Agricultural Productivity Report: Sustainability in an Uncertain Season

From the Global Harvest Initiative.

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