Announcements

The Office of Pre-Award Services (OPAS) will be closed for Indigenous Peoples' Day on Monday, October 9, 2023. Any proposals that are due on this day need to arrive at OPAS no later than 9 a.m. on October 2, 2023 and final documents need to be finished by 9 a.m. on October 5, 2023 to comply with the 5-day review procedure. All proposals due on this day will be submitted prior to the office closure. Please make adjustments to your routing calendars accordingly.

The Office of Research and Engagement, in collaboration with the Controller’s Office and A&F systems, is pleased to announce the fall 2023 Research Administration Core Curriculum Training Program.

Register now through Workplace Learning and Development (WLD).

The goal of this program is to offer a comprehensive overview of research administration for new staff, as well as members of the campus community looking for a refresher or interested in learning new job skills. The program is broken down into six core topic sessions that will be presented by various content experts. More detail and program descriptions.

 

As UMass Press celebrates its 60th anniversary, a generous anonymous donor has once again pledged a 2-to-1 match for the Regional Books Fund, which includes books about New England as well as Bright Leaf Books, UMass Press’s imprint dedicated to our region.

As we begin the new semester, faculty and departments may find that some international students are encountering challenges getting to the U.S. due to consular service suspensions or delays. The Office of Research Compliance (ORC) would like to remind you of guidance related to United States Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) country-specific regulatory programs that restrict the remote delivery of courses and other forms of instruction by U.S. institutions of higher education. Such comprehensive regulatory programs currently restrict our ability to deliver remote instruction to students and other audiences from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and occupied regions of Ukraine.

Under these regulations, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is prohibited from “exporting” online or remotely delivered graduate level courses to nationals of those countries when they are outside of the U.S., whether they are in their home country or elsewhere. In other words, unless such students are physically present in the U.S., UMass Amherst is prohibited, by OFAC regulations, from enrolling them in graduate courses remotely. These restrictions apply to courses and content being delivered remotely due to visa-related circumstances as well as to programs originally intended for remote delivery, such as online graduate degree programs, webinars, and virtual conferences. The regulations also prohibit the delivery of instructional content through webinars and participation in virtual conferences to or in the sanctioned countries. In addition to considering country-based restrictions, we must also screen remote international students and scholars against restricted-party lists issued by OFAC and other government departments and agencies. The penalties for violating OFAC regulations are severe and may include, among others, significant monetary penalties and disqualification from receiving Federal research funding.

If you are or become aware of any courses or presentations intended for remote delivery to international students or other audiences outside of the U.S., it is critical that you notify the Office of Research Compliance in advance so that we can ensure that remote participants are not from (or located in) an OFAC comprehensively-sanctioned country or on a restricted-party list before the program begins.

Should you need assistance with analyzing a circumstance for compliance with OFAC or other regulatory restrictions, please contact the ORC at rescomp@research.umass.edu or 413-545-5283 and we will be happy to help you.

Starting Friday, September 8, 2023, the Office of Research Compliance will start offering monthly drop in virtual office hours the second Friday of each month at 10 a.m. Representatives from the Human Research Protection Office (HRPO), Institutional Animal Care and Use (IACUC), Research Risk (Export Control, Data Security) and Conflict of Interest (COI) will be on hand to answer questions. The Zoom link is here.

The Office of Pre-Award Services (OPAS) will be closed for Labor Day on Monday, September 4, 2023. Any proposals that are due on this day need to arrive at OPAS no later than 9 a.m. on August 28, 2023 and final documents need to be finished by 9 a.m. on August 31, 2023 to comply with the 5-day review procedure. All proposals due on this day will be submitted prior to the office closure. Please make adjustments to your routing calendars accordingly.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a new mandate that expands the existing Responsible and Ethical Conduct of Research (RECR) training requirements to additional research personnel, effective for all proposals submitted on or after July 31, 2023.  

NSF previously required that undergraduate students, graduate students and postdocs supported by NSF funds complete RECR training. The amended requirements, deriving from Section 7009 of the America COMPETES Act, mandate that all personnel supported by the grant complete RECR training, including Principal Investigators, Co-principal Investigators, and Senior/Key Personnel, in addition to students and postdocs. The amended requirements also stipulate that the training must include the subject of mentor training and mentorship.

The details of NSF’s requirement can be found under NSF’s Proposal & Award Policies and Procedure Guide, Chapter IX: Recipient Standards.  

NSF requires institutions to have a plan in place to provide appropriate training and oversight for the responsible and ethical conduct of research. UMass Amherst continues to contract with the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) to provide cloud-based, on-demand learning that fulfills this requirement. Our RECR training page provides instructions along with a link to enroll.

  • It is strongly recommended that all Principal Investigators, Co-Principal Investigators, and Senior/Key Personnel complete the RECR training shortly after proposal submission. This will prevent delays later resulting from non-compliance with NSF’s training requirement.   
  • Undergraduate and graduate students, along with postdocs, should complete the training prior to or shortly after funding has been awarded.
  • If training is not completed within 60 days of award notification, payroll may be transferred off the grant to a non-NSF source until requirements have been met.
  • NSF may audit grant recipients and request certification of RECR training for all personnel mentioned above.

The new NSF RECR regulations also stress the need for mentor training and mentorship. The CITI RECR training contains a module on this topic but additional UMass Amherst resources are available at the following:

The Office of Research Compliance is available to support Principal Investigators’ compliance with the new training mandate. Please do not hesitate to reach out to Melinda LeLacheur in the Office of Research Compliance at melindal@research.umass.edu, 413-545-5283 or on Teams Chat with any questions regarding this updated policy and the related training requirement

Animal Care Services (ACS) is pleased to announce it is rolling out an updated animal ordering procedure using a Kuali Build smart form to enhance and improve the process. The new form will provide ACS the ability to receive orders from investigators through the Build interface; easily and quickly route the purchase request to the IACUC office for concurrence on approved census; and document ACS submission and confirmation of the order to a vendor. This process will be more efficient than the existing Adobe form and email process currently in use, since it will gather orders through a central portal, archive important information regarding the order, reflect order status, and allow data retrieval and reporting. The new form was developed and tested with participation of faculty investigators.

The new Build form will go live on September 1, 2023 and will be accessible from a link posted on Research & Engagement’s Research Administration Forms page. The existing Adobe form for animal ordering will no longer be accepted as of that date. For questions or assistance, please reach out to the ACS staff at animalorders@umass.edu.

On June 26, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and Chancellor-elect Javier Reyes sent the email below to the UMass Amherst community to announce that Laura Vandenberg, currently Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, has agreed to serve as Acting Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, effective July 1, 2023.



Dear Campus Community,

Laura Vandenberg

We are pleased to announce that Laura Vandenberg, currently Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, has agreed to serve as Acting Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, effective July 1, 2023.

During the past six months, Dr. Vandenberg has demonstrated the leadership and management abilities that will be essential in advancing our research priorities in the coming academic year. She takes on her new role as Vice Chancellor Mike Malone becomes Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost for the coming year.

Laura previously served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and as a Professor of environmental health sciences. An expert in the study of endocrinology, she came to UMass Amherst from Tufts University’s department of biology and its Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, where she completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship. Prior to her time at Tufts, she received postdoctoral training at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Forsyth Institute in Boston. She earned her doctorate in cell, molecular and developmental biology from Tufts University School of Medicine and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Cornell University.

Thank you, Laura, for taking on this important position for our university community.

Sincerely,

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy
Chancellor-Elect Javier Reyes

Michael Malone, currently vice chancellor for research and engagement, has been named to serve as interim provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. A national search for a permanent provost will be launched in the new academic year.

In a joint message to the campus community, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and Chancellor-Elect Javier Reyes said, “During this transitional period, Dr. Malone’s extensive knowledge of our community and his commitment to excellence will be invaluable in sustaining the progress and momentum that UMass Amherst has achieved over the past decade. He places a high value on working with colleagues across campus and making decisions in a collaborative fashion to chart our path forward.”

Malone has served UMass Amherst with distinction for more than four decades as a teacher, researcher and administrator. He joined the university’s chemical engineering faculty in 1980 after earning his Ph.D. from UMass Amherst. He went on to become dean of the College of Engineering and was subsequently appointed vice chancellor for research and engagement in 2009. He was also the first Ronnie and Eugene M. Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering, a position devoted to enhancing interdisciplinary teaching and research among the fields of management, engineering and science. Under his leadership as vice chancellor, the university has greatly strengthened its research infrastructure, sponsored funding and impactful results, with a special emphasis on translational research.

At UMass Amherst, his honors include the Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’ highest honor for classroom instruction; the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship; and the Outstanding Senior Faculty Award and the General Electric Outstanding Teaching Award, both given by the College of Engineering. He was a visiting scientist at the DuPont Company in 1984 and 1993-94. In 2004, he was named a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Carl Rust is the new Assistant Vice Chancellor for Corporate Engagement (AVCCE) at UMass Amherst, effective July 2, 2023. The AVCCE will serve as the central point of contact and coordination for university engagement with industry. Rust will collaborate with counterparts across campus to increase sponsored research; career and professional opportunities for students, alumni, and faculty; and related philanthropic aspects of the relationships. Carl will also continue some of the duties as delegated to him by the UMass President’s Office.

Rust comes to us from the University of Massachusetts President's Office where he has been serving as the Executive Director for Industry Engagement and Business Development. In that role, he developed and led system-wide efforts to pursue an active, integrated approach to business engagement, innovation and entrepreneurship, economic development, and technology transfer to yield greater benefit for the entire university system. He is also currently a part-time adjunct Professor for the College of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of South Africa and a part-time consultant for the National Science Foundation.

Rust spent 25 years at the Georgia Institute of Technology in various roles, including the Associate Director and Industry Liaison Officer for the NSF-sponsored Engineering Research Center on Packaging and then in various other roles focused on high-level industry collaborations, innovation ecosystems, strategic partnerships, and international initiatives. Rust holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from The Citadel.

I am delighted that Carl is available to relocate from the UMass President’s Office to our campus. He has been a central figure in new initiatives in the President’s Office, some of which will continue here, and his new position will strengthen our infrastructure to enable new opportunities that require corporate engagement.

Posted 5/30/23

Dr. Michael Esmail has been appointed as the new Director of Animal Care Services at UMass Amherst, effective July 10, 2023. Esmail will lead the operational management and administrative direction of Animal Care Services and will provide leadership and direction in policy development and implementation of the program. He will work closely alongside Dr. J. Paul Spurlock who will remain in the role of Attending Veterinarian.

Esmail comes to us from Tufts University where he is a Senior Staff Veterinarian. He has extensive experience working in university settings while providing leadership and support to veterinary staff and researchers. He has worked with numerous animal models and brings strong experience working with the IACUC committee. Esmail says, “I see the position of an animal program Director as managing support and strongly advocating for animal program staff, physical facilities/equipment, animal program researchers, and of course, primarily, the animals.”

Esmail completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship/Laboratory Animal Medicine Residency in 2015 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after completing his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine in 2012 from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University. 

UMass search committee chair Laura Vandenberg said, “The committee and the many members of the UMass community that met with Dr. Esmail during his campus visit were impressed with his knowledge, collegiality, and professionalism. I am confident that he will bring these traits to the role of Animal Care Services director. We are very excited to have Dr. Esmail join the Animal Care Services program and the Research & Engagement community.”

Posted 5/22/23

The Office of Pre-Award Services (OPAS) will be closed for commencement (May 26) and Memorial Day (May 29). Any proposals that are due on May 26 or 29, 2023 need to arrive at OPAS no later than 9 a.m. on May 19 and final documents need to be finished by 9 a.m. on May 24 to comply with the 5-day review procedure. All proposals due on these days will be submitted prior to the office closure. Please make adjustments to your routing calendars accordingly.

Posted 5/9/23

 

In anticipation of the upcoming 60th anniversary (2024) of the State-to-State cooperation between the University of Massachusetts and the Universities of Baden-Württemberg, the university is providing small travel grants of up to $3,000 for researchers to do short-term visits to university campuses in the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany. The intent of the mobility program is to establish new research collaborations or strengthen existing partnerships.

Faculty members and librarians at UMass Amherst who are interested in working more closely with partners at any of the nine research universities in Baden-Württemberg and who wish to become actively involved in the state-to-state program can apply for funding.

The application deadline is June 9, 2023. Application and more information.

Posted 4/19/23

Dear Colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to announce the recipients of the 2023-2024 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Awards:

  • Lynn Adler, Biology
  • Maria José Botelho, Teacher Education & Curriculum Studies
  • Gretchen Gerzina, English

Please join me in congratulating the 2023-2024 Conti Faculty Fellows!

Many thanks to all the nominators and to the review committee who recommended the awards.

Sincerely,

Mike

Michael F. Malone
Vice Chancellor for Research & Engagement
University of Massachusetts Amherst
(413) 545-5270
Assistant: Christine A. Burnett, caburnett@research.umass.edu

Posted 3/28/23

Dear Colleagues,

The Provost and my office, in collaboration the Chancellor, have established the Large-Scale Interdisciplinary Research Awards (LIRA) program . LIRA will offer seed funds totaling up to $400,000 to support integrated team efforts to develop large-scale initiatives. The goal of this program is to empower creativity; to promote equitable collaborations, especially those that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion; and to attract substantial external funding. Preference will be given to projects that address large-scale societal problems, with potential for significant impact. The program will provide professional cohort-based training to awarded teams on integrative teaming, equitable collaboration, and budget planning, and research development support for ideation and proposal development. LIRA topic areas should be well aligned with campus strengths, including, but not limited to, strategic emphasis areas, such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Sustainability; Healthy Aging; Society and Technology; and Data Science. The Provost and VCRE will soon announce another seed funding opportunity – the Interdisciplinary Faculty Research Awards (IFRA). IFRA will focus on these same areas of emphasis, but will target faculty teams at the earliest stages of collaboration who may not be targeting external funding.

Due date for LIRA applications is May 8, 2023 at 5:00 p.m.

The LIRA program has two tracks:

  • Track 1 - Integrative Team Development awards up to $30,000. Track 1 supports the development of integrated team research, often spanning multiple disciplines, leading to proposals for significant extramural funding of $1 million per year or more for at least 3 years. Track 1 awards will support integrative team development and may support research to demonstrate the viability of the concept.
  • Track 2 - Center Development awards up to $60,000. Track 2 supports the advancement of integrated teams, often spanning multiple disciplines, with a vision for a large, center-level grant proposal leading to external funding of $3 million per year or more for at least 5 years. Track 2 awards will support teams with pre-existing collaborations among participants.


The Office of Research Development will hold a virtual LIRA informational workshop on April 11, 2023, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. for potential teams to help them determine their level of team readiness and provide guidance on writing a successful application to the LIRA program. Register here.

Request for Proposals (RFP) can be found here.
 

Sincerely,

Mike Malone
Vice Chancellor for Research & Engagement
University of Massachusetts Amherst
(413) 545-5270
Assistant: Christine A. Burnett, caburnett@research.umass.edu
 

Posted 3/10/23

Acorn Innovation Awards Help Massachusetts Research Institutions Commercialize Scientific Breakthroughs. Congratulations to UMass Amherst Researchers:

  • Rachid Skouta, PhD, Larry Schwartz, PhD; Joseph D. Jerry, PhD; University of Massachusetts Amherst; Kin-Ho Choi, PhD, Dana Farber Cancer Institute
  • Govind Srimathveeravalli, PhD, Dr. Stephen Solomon, MD; University of Massachusetts Amherst

The Office of Research and Engagement, in collaboration with the Controller’s Office and A&F systems, is pleased to announce the spring 2023 Research Administration Core Curriculum Training Program.

Register now through Workplace Learning and Development (WLD).

The goal of this program is to offer a comprehensive overview of research administration for new staff, as well as members of the campus community looking for a refresher or interested in learning new job skills. The program is broken down into six core topic sessions that will be presented by various content experts. More detail and program descriptions.

We also offer Kuali Proposal Development group Zoom trainings through WLD.

For on-demand Kuali training for individuals via Zoom, please email to ra-training@umass.edu.

Posted 2/14/23

Please be aware that the Office of Pre-Award Services (OPAS) is currently short-staffed, and an above-average number of proposal submissions are anticipated in what remains of the month of February. OPAS will be closed Monday, February 20, 2023 for President’s Day. Anything that PIs and grants/contracts staff can do to get ahead of the required five business days for proposal submission would be greatly appreciated. Please also note that OPAS likely cannot accommodate late proposals this month.

In collaboration with Research IT, we have developed a new Kuali Build No-Cost Extension Request form to help facilitate no-cost extensions. The form will help Principal Investigators (PIs) and Business Managers request no-cost extensions and cut down on emails. It is now live and can be found on the Research Administration Forms page.

The new form will request information that is typically required by sponsors and the Office of Post-Award Management (OPAM) in order to approve, submit, and process no-cost extension requests. Fields will autofill based on Kuali Award ID.

For sponsors (NSF, DOE, NOAA) that already have their own portals for submission of no-cost extension requests, you will continue to submit requests through those portals. Our new form will alert you to submit through the sponsor portal if the form does not need to be completed.

For questions, please submit a ticket to the R&E Help Desk.

Posted 2/2/23

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