The Spin on Research « Updates from the VP & the Research Office

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sometimes referred to as “drones,” has been the focus of increased recent international attention. It also has captured attention in the Oregon Capitol with the introduction of House Bill 2710 and Senate Bill 524, which would set restrictions on the use of UAVs by law enforcement agencies, and Senate Bill 71, which would regulate the use of drones by private individuals and public agencies.

Any legislative or public review of the use of UAVs should include a complete understanding that these aerial systems also have many domestic uses that are practical and benign, and should be embraced for their potential to save money and lives.

There’s not much that UAVs can do that a pilot in a small plane cannot do, but they can do it more safely and at much lower cost. UAVs can monitor and help manage wildfires, or support a search and rescue mission. They can help forest product industries plant trees. They can monitor wildlife, improve irrigation, detect crop disease outbreaks and gauge environmental health.

UAVs are an emerging national industry that Oregon can help lead.

Under a mandate from Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration will establish several test sites for UAVs by 2015. Our state offers a unique combination of research excellence, varied terrain, relevant industry and local applications in agriculture and forestry.

Oregon State University has formed the OSU Unmanned Vehicle System Research Consortium with industry, government and others to bring a national UAV test center to the state and develop the use of these aerial systems, a potential multi-billion dollar job growth engine that will also provide significant benefit to society.

Decades of experience in remote sensing drew Oregon State University to this venture. OSU oceanographers use NASA satellites to monitor global phytoplankton productivity and identify harmful algal blooms. We use optical remote sensing to detect earthquake faults, assess wildfire impacts on forests and measure tsunami inundation patterns. We have instruments on the International Space Station to study shoals and ocean shores.

Unmanned autonomous vehicles are an important growth industry in the United States. Like GPS, the Internet, microprocessors and many other technologies, they started with military applications, but now are staples of everyday life.

We recognize that the transition toward considering the civilian use of UAVs has raised privacy concerns. Protection from prying cameras where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy is a legitimate concern, legally protected by current law and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet every new technology has historically raised some kind of social concern. And, in response, society has figured out reasonable solutions. We urge that these same solutions be pursued in parallel with the needed technical research of UAVs.

Regardless of what we do in Oregon, UAV technology will be developed in the United States and around the world. But because of Oregon’s comprehensive scientific and industry experience, and our state’s ideal geography, we can choose to be a leader in this exciting venture.

This article originally appeared in the March 9 2013 Statesman Journal, here: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013303100021&nclick_check=1

This ain’t your parents’ research culture.

A lot has changed over the last several decades in how we do research. I wonder if we’re better off. I’d like to suggest that some of these changes need to be undone.

Consider the following significant changes from “the norm” of the past and how they should be corrected:

GET RID OF BROADER IMPACTS: About 15 years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) instituted the formal requirement for demonstrating “broader impacts” in our research proposals (that is to say, in addition to the technical or intellectual merit of the work being offered). In my humble opinion, this was a most insidious change. After all, NSF is that last bastion of fundamental research, established for the benefit of improving understanding. All of the other agencies are mission agencies, whose research clearly needs to benefit their mission. At NSF, however, the broader impacts requirement was introduced because a vocal minority felt they were not getting enough immediate return from their tax investments in science. It’s absurd and should be repealed.

Bohr Heisenberg Pauli

(Here’s an interesting quick game anyone can play: do a Google search on “top researchers of the last hundred years”, then try to determine how that list of individuals might have fared under the test of “broader impacts” … should Heisenberg or Pauli have been judged by their assessment of the utility of their research?)

Somebody needs to explain Pasteur’s quadrant to our elected policy makers.

UNLEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD: Early in my research management career I was asked to provide a history of the US Navy’s establishment of what was called the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Those of you who are Tom Clancy aficionados will recognize this acronym as the true-to-life basis for our maritime superiority in the Cold War; SOSUS was our acoustic network that served as the most effective component of our anti-submarine warfare toolbox, detecting Soviet submarines throughout the Atlantic and Pacific. Anyway, the short version of the story is that in the early 1950s a gaggle of Navy Admirals went up to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a problem and a blank check. They invested in the best engineers and marine scientists to design, build and deploy the SOSUS array within about two years. They sole-sourced the contract, conducted no competition, and used a closed peer-review process. They did not invoke a Gantt chart of Technology Readiness Levels. In short, by today’s Federal Acquisition Regulations, they broke a lot of rules. The outcome, however, was clearly successful. Today, we are encumbered by so many accountability-based requirements, just to get to “go” on a research program that the odds are stacked against any proposal to the tune of 5:1 for rejection. Most of this dilemma is a consequence of ensuring that every researcher has the same opportunity to compete and that no unfair advantages are put in place. The same concept underlies the current trend toward prohibiting cost-sharing by institutions on research proposals. That idea is intended to ensure that the research faculty at a less well-off institution can compete fairly with another Principal Investigator at, say Cal Tech or Johns Hopkins. Okay, I get that, but maybe the better solution is to encourage research institutions to actually make investments in the research, and not rely exclusively on the federal coffers. That means playing on an uneven field, but it also means we’ll start strengthening the major research institutions and (gasp!) eliminating some of the smaller or less performing institutions. With federal funding getting tighter we need to rethink how we spread the wealth. The old saying that a rising tide floats all boats has an inverse: a sinking tide grounds the unmoving.

COMMINGLE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RESEARCH DOLLARS: Fortunately I can’t get thrown in jail for advocating this, but I can be locked up for doing it! Now, I’m stretching my point here, since this was never really done the way I’m proposing, but if you go back a century or so, you’ll see that a lot of the research that was done was supported by private benefactors. In fact the major researchers of the 19th Century were mostly wealthy entrepreneurs who were almost exclusively self-supported. What I’m suggesting here is that we researchers in the U.S. are competing against peers overseas who enjoy much more latitude in combining private (e.g. industry) funding with the resources of their taxpayers (just take a look at Finnish telecommunications research as one good example). We bend over backwards to ensure that the dollar from a corporate sponsor never sees the dollar from a federal agency, even though both dollars may be spent in the same lab by the same PI. Again, the basis for this makes sense: it ensures transparency as needed on how our tax dollars are used, and it avoids mischief in areas such as conflict of interest. But let’s assume for a moment that the vast majority of our researchers are smart, educable, and ethical, and that we build a system of oversight and accountability within the research institution. If those assumptions are viable then we ought to be able to combine investments from all sources in a way that gets more bang for the buck, eliminates unnecessary duplication of proposals, while still protecting intellectual property effectively. My guess is that industry would be a lot more eager to come on campus and pay for research. And, after all, with federal budgets trending as they have recently, we are going to want that industry investment on campus!

Okay, I’m finished. Now I’ll start cleaning up some of this shattered china!

The Research Office and the Office for Commercialization & Corporate Development gave their new Faculty Industry Partnering award to Brian Paul, professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, co-director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, and seminal member of Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI).

Paul has been recognized for achieving extraordinarily high impact innovations through research collaborations with industry.

The award recognizes excellence by Oregon State research faculty, and will be announced during each University Day at the start of the academic year.

Please view the on-line “Prezi” presentation with more details about Dr. Paul’s contributions and career.

Note: The Faculty Senate posts information about nominations and criteria for this award and and the Faculty Innovator Award

In the final scene of the movie “Thelma and Louise,” the two main characters intentionally drive their convertible at high speed off a cliff in the desert.

The scene is proving iconic for the pending action associated with the Budget Control Act that Congress passed, and the President signed, over a year ago. We know that action as “sequestration.”

In short, because of real and growing concerns over the increasing debt of our federal government, our representatives in Congress laid out a series of control measures which, if not adopted by choice, would result in an automatic budget reduction of between 8.2% and 9.4% (for non-defense and defense discretionary budgets, respectively) on 2 January 2013. The action of sequestration was intentionally designed to be so aggressive and unpalatable that Congress would take more measured and reasonable approaches (presumably in the form of increasing revenue and decreasing spending, in some combination) well before that deadline.

Well, for a variety of reasons, including a contentious and highly charged series of election campaigns, that more measured solution didn’t transpire.

Speeding toward the cliff

Smart people are working to find a meaningful and implementable solution. This cannot simply be “voted down.” The fiscal problems are real (to paraphrase former Senator Everett Dirksen, “a debt of $1.2T is real money”). But the realists also recognize that trying to solve this problem with a draconian cut would be like losing 8.2% of your body weight through decapitation: not a sustainable solution.

My own belief is that Congress and the President, through a mixture of deferrals and compromises on spending/revenue generation, will soften the blow of the immediate FY13 crisis (but I kid you not, there will still be a blow), while buying time to develop a more sustainable solution that won’t cripple the current economic recovery

. . . kinda like throwing a detour in front of Thelma and Louise.

For folks like us, working in a predominantly federally funded research environment (roughly 70% of our university research revenue comes from agencies in Washington) this means we WILL have to make significant adjustments We have estimated that, unmitigated, these prescribed cuts will translate to an initial single-year hit of $15M to OSU’s research portfolio (plus an additional $2M to other programs).

Rest assured, at President Ray’s request, the Research Office and the Office of Government Relations are trying hard to determine what the impacts of such adjustments might mean. The problem is that nobody in DC is sharing much information about how each agency may choose to make their cuts.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released their ‘guidance’ for these cuts, at the request of Congress, last month (OMB Report Pursuant to the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012 (P. L. 112–155)): 394 pages of Excel spreadsheet wizardry, revealing nothing more than what appeared to be a “peanut-buttered” distribution of cuts at the previously indicated 8.2% and 9.4% level.

What will happen?

There are, however, many rumors about how such cuts might be doled out. Having worked in four different federal agencies myself (and having had five separate trips to DC in just a couple of months, recently), I am willing to guess about how this might play out. I suspect those agencies that employ scientists in their own labs (DOE, Navy, NIH, EPA, USGS, etc.) will protect these “in-house” assets, at the expense of some of the extramural activities – meaning even larger cuts to competitive research programs. I also believe that agencies will try to soften the immediate blows to academic programs by simply deferring or delaying upcoming competitions, rather than rescinding actively funded programs. And I think we will see agencies trying to make surgical cuts to pare down to the bone those research projects that they still must continue to support, through efforts such as increasing matching requests, or perhaps even imposing salary caps (as some agencies already do). Let’s hope they don’t prescribe really dumb solutions, like reducing support for graduate students.

The real question: What can we do ?

The short answer is to develop as many options as possible. Start looking at your existing grants and prioritizing your expenses. Start thinking about alternative funding sources. The University’s success in growing our industry support for research (up by 42% in two years) is not an accident. If you haven’t thought about this route, let’s start talking, since there might be private sector funding out there to help accommodate reductions in federal support. Let us know if there are foundations that you want to try working with. The OSU Foundation has had some success in getting these kinds of resources to faculty on campus. Discuss this issue with your peers, your students and your academic unit, and with us in the Research Office.

We have a lot of very clever researchers at OSU. We’re going to have to apply some of the same creativity we use in our research to resolve this issue.

And, as a final thought, remember that this doesn’t go away.

Even if we soften the blow of the FY13 consequences, we still have another 10 years of budget reduction work at hand. The challenge is to find a smooth downhill off-ramp for Thelma and Louise.

Thank You

Rick Spinrad, Vice President for Research

Your comments to this posting are welcome.

The Research Office and the Office for Commercialization & Corporate Development have created two awards recognizing excellence by Oregon State research faculty. The recipients for 2012 were announced at University Day in September.

The Faculty Innovator Award celebrates impact through engagement in commercialization partnerships, recognizing a faculty member whose extraordinarily high impact innovations from research are translated into transformative results that help promote economic development and social progress.

This year it was awarded posthumously to Richard Peterson, who passed away in February.

Dr. Peterson was arominent national expert in heat transfer, thermodynamics and combustion, and a leading researcher in miniature and microscale energy systems. He was a professor of mechanical engineering.

“Rich was a prolific inventor whose research will have a profound impact on lives well into the future. He submitted 34 invention disclosures in the past 15 years. Rich really believed in the potential impact his discoveries could have on millions of lives.”

Brian Wall
Director of the Office for Commercialization and Corporate Development

A resolution by the Board of Directors of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) noted Dr. Peterson’s leadership as one of the core founders and as co-director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, and President, CTO, and co-founder of ONAMI Gap Company Applied Exergy. His many creative contributions to development of technology, included advances in grid energy storage.

Please view an on-line presentation with more details about Dr. Peterson’s career and about the criteria for the annual award.

“Rich was fiercely independent but passionate about his research making a positive impact. He also cared deeply about teaching and leaves behind a legacy of engineers who will continue making impact. He will be sorely missed.”

Brian Paul
Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering,
Director of the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute

The system for submitting funding proposals has been completely transformed. Over the past year, the Research Office has implemented a state-of-the-art electronic proposal system, Cayuse. Cayuse SP replaces the paper Proposal Transmittal Form, and is now used for all proposals. Cayuse 424 is the Federal form set for both Grants.gov and Research.gov, and can also be used to prepare proposal budgets for proposals going to non-Federal sponsors.

Faculty should no longer be submitting paper-based proposals or the OSU Proposal Transmittal Form. Multiple training sessions have already been offered on the Cayuse products, and staff from the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) will continue to offer training sessions at least monthly. For information about training, please e-mail sponsored.programs@oregonstate.edu

OSP’s web-drop capability for Grants.gov packages is now disabled. These proposals (with the exception of the submissions for OSU’s Statewide Public Service funds) should be prepared through Cayuse 424 and routed through Cayuse SP. If you began proposal preparation in Cayuse 424 , contact an OSP staff member for assistance with proposal routing.

Sponsored Programs now has distinct teams to serve Oregon State researchers

Aedra Reynolds, Dawn Wagner and Vickie Watkins support the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, the College of Forestry, and the units housed at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.
Eric Anundson, Cindy Rasberry and Lin Reilly support all other units.
Please join us in welcoming Kim Reese as our new friendly voice on the phone and smiling face at out front desk in Kerr 308B.

You will soon see a refreshed OSP website that should make our services and resources even more accessible.

-Pat Hawk
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs

Our research funding success (as reported in the recent media release) is a tribute, of course, to the brilliant, dedicated work of all in our research enterprise. I congratulate faculty, technicians, support staff, administrative units, post-docs, and students. In addition to the big-picture data that gains public attention are the back-door stories.

Increased funding means increased administrative tasks. In the Research Office, we have been working diligently to decrease the burden of red tape and paperwork on researchers. The new Cayuse electronic system for submission of proposals was an important move toward fewer human errors and greater efficiency. It also has involved learning curves for many. I thank Pat Hawk and her Office of Sponsored Programs staff for their flexibility, patience, and training efforts, keeping up with their amazing services while – mid-air – converting to a new system. We also appreciate all the faculty who have stepped outside their comfort zone to try that new system. We are celebrating that Cayuse indeed is galloping forward to make proposal processing easier for PIs. We greatly appreciate Eric Anundson, Cindy Rasberry, Kim Reese, Lin Reilly, Aedra Reynolds, Dawn Wagner, and Vickie Watkins (and, until recently, Laurel Neidigh).

Another story related to funding is our growing success in partnering with industry. We anticipate great results through innovative strategies being established by Ron Adams. Brian Wall and his Office for Commercialization and Corporate Development staff have steadily upped the pace of commercialization, licensing, and new business development. We have created new positions and recruited fantastic colleagues to support increasing opportunities to bring the benefit of research out to the public. Credit goes to Mitch Abrams, Shirley Chow, Kirt Fuller, Jianbo Hu, Mary Phillips, Denis Sather, Ann Schmierer, Susan Tillitt, and Berry Treat (and, until recently, Dan Whitaker).

The Office of Research Integrity plays an important role in our success. While we still seek a new director, Rich Holdren has been leading the efforts of the talented and smart people who help us ensure compliance with regulations, so our research progress is unencumbered. The team includes Kevin Buch, Stephen Durkee, Susan Glowacz, Jillian Grant, Helen Diggs, Lisa Leventhal, Candi Loeb, Mary Samuel, and Nicole Wolf.

Our Incentive Programs make the difference in moving many OSU projects forward. Across campus, work has been enhanced because Rich Holdren and Debbie Delmore make it possible to provide significant internal funding for general purposes, release time, equipment, and undergraduate projects. They also coordinate our university’s opportunities for limited-submission programs.

As director of Post Doctoral Programs, and liaison between the Graduate School and the Research Office, Barb Bond has been innovative in supporting researchers who are too-often unheralded. For one thing, the new Post-Doc organization will help strengthen the contributions of that important group.

I am well-aware that I could not keep up the front-line work without the many and varied services of our central staff. Please join me in thanking Tracy Elmshaeuser, Stephen Hotard, Deb Walker and Jana Zvibleman (and until recently, Erika Fleck) for their accomplishments. We all have also enjoyed help from some of Oregon State’s finest students.

“Space, the New Frontier!”

- Helen Diggs’ quip about the common challenge the Research Office shares with many across campus

While Research Office has bid farewell to a few members of our team this year, we have had a net increase in staff to carry the load, and so we’ve been knocking our elbows against the Kerr walls. The need for more office space to accommodate our new members has resulted – so far – in a temporary fix. That’s why, to find some of us, you’ll be coming to the 4th floor of Snell; others have shifted to different locations on the 3rd floor of Kerr. It is a priority that the services of the Research Office remain easily accessible to the campus community – stay tuned to hear of the better, long-term solution (i.e., where we’ll unpack our boxes).

Again I thank all in our research community for your perseverance and for your successes. We can all take pride in how, together, we are working to enhance health, the environment, and the economy – that’s still our news.
Thank You

Rick Spinrad, Vice President for Research

Please see oregonstate.edu/research/contacts for photos of staff and more information about the Research Office services.

Your comments to this posting are welcome.

Behind the Media Release

Our research funding success as reported in the press release [[url xxx]] is a tribute, of course, to the brilliant, dedicatedwork of all in our research enterprise.I congratulated faculty,technicians, support staff, administrative units, post-docs, and students. In addition to the big-picture data that gains public attention, there are stories “under the hood.”

Increased funding means increased administrative tasks. In the Research Office, wehave been working diligently to decrease the burden of red tape and paperwork on researchers. The new Cayuse electronic system for submission of proposals was an important move toward fewer human errors and greater efficiency. It also has involved learning curves for many. I thank Pat Hawk and her Office of Sponsored Programs staff for their flexibility, patience, and training efforts, keeping up with their amazing services while- mid-air- converting to a new system. We also appreciate all the faculty who have stepped outside their comfort zone to try that new system. We are celebrating that Cayuse indeed is galloping forward to make proposal processing easier for PIs. We greatly appreciate Eric Anundson, Cindy Rasberry, Lin Reilly, Aedra Reynolds, Dawn Wagner,and Vickie Watkins (and, until recently, Laurel Neidigh).

Another story related to funding is our growing success in partnering with industry. We anticipate great results innovative strategies being commandeered by Ron Adams. Brian Wall and his Office for Commercialization and Corporate Development staff have steadily upped the pace of commercialization, licensing, and new business development.We have created new positions and recruited fantastic colleagues to support increasing opportunities to bring the benefit of research out to the public. Credit goes to Mitchell Abrams, Shirley Chow, Kurt Fuller, Jianbo Hu, Mary Foley Phillips, Denis Sather, Ann Schmierer,Susan Tillitt, andBerry Treat (and, until recently, Dan Whitaker).

The Office of Research Integrity plays an important role in oursuccess. While we still seek a new director, Rich Holdren has been leading the efforts of the talented and smart people who help us ensure compliance with regulations, so our research progress is unencumbered. The talented team includes Kevin Buch, Stephen Durkee, Susan Glowacz, Jillian Grant, Lisa Leventhal, Candi Loeb, Mary Samuel, and Nicole Wolf.

Our Incentive Programs make the difference in moving many OSU projects forward. Across campus, work has been enhanced because Rich Holdren and Debbie Delmore make it possible to provide significant internal funding for general purposes, release time, equipment, and undergraduate projects. They alsocoordinate our university’s opportunities for limited-submission programs.

As director of Post Doctoral Programs, and liaison between the Graduate School and the Research Office, Barb Bond has been innovative in supporting researchers who are too-often un-heralded. For one thing, the new Post-Doc organization willhelp strengthen the contributions of that important group.

I am well-aware that I could not keep up the front-line work without the many and varied services of our central staff. Please join me in thanking Tracy Elmshaeuser, Stephen Hotard,Deb Walker and Jana Zvibleman (and until recently, Erika Fleck) for their accomplishments.

“Space, the new frontier!”

- Helen Diggs’ quip about the common challenge the Research Officeshares with many across campus

While Research Officehas bid farewell to a few members of our team this year, we have had a net increase in staff to carry the load, and so we’ve been knocking our elbows against the Kerr walls.The need for more office space to accommodate our new members has resulted – so far – in a temporary fix. That’s why, to find some of us,you’ll be coming to the 4^th floor of Snell while others have shifted to different locations on the 3^rdfloor of Kerr. It is a priority that the services of the RO remain easily accessible to the campus community – stay tuned to hear of thebetter, long-term solution (i.e., where we’ll unpack our boxes).

Thank You

Again I thank all in the RO research community for your perseverance and for your successes. We can all take pride in how, together, we are working to enhance health, the environment, and the economy– that’s still our news.

Please see http://oregonstate.edu/research/contacts for photos and more information about the Research Office staff and services.

Did you neglect to take a trip to Antarctica this summer?

Do it vicariously, via the ongoing blog Deep Sea and Polar Biology.

Andrew Thurber (Principal Investigator, post-doc in the College of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences) and his assistant Rory Welsh (graduate student in the Department of Microbiology) have begun a long deployment to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where Thurber is continuing his Antarctic research on energy flows and nutrient cycling in the soft-sediment seafloor communities beneath the ice.

Thurber and Welsh are both OSU scientific divers. They spent the last month working with OSU Diving Safety Officer Kevin Buch, completing the workup and proficiency dives to meet requirements of the National Science Foundation United States Antarctic Program. To prepare for working under the ice, the team practiced advanced drysuit skills and sample-collection techniques at soft sediment dive sites in the Hood Canal and at the OSU Pier of the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

At McMurdo, they are diving in water temperatures of 28° F. They use scuba regulators designed to minimize the potential for freeze-ups, and wear drysuits, multiple layers of thermal undergarments, special multi-layer hoods, and sealed dry gloves.

To keep track of their progress, and to learn more about the OSU Scientific Diving Program:

http://oregonstate.edu/research/diving/

With my mentor, ADM James D. Watkins 2010

I promised myself years ago that when my mentor, Admiral James D. Watkins, passed away, wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I would make arrangements to go to his funeral.

And now it happened. So I jumped on a red-eye flight back to Washington, DC and attended the funeral ceremony. It was a beautiful service, in one of the largest Catholic churches in the country. It was attended by Senators, Cabinet Members, military, clergy, and many “just plain” people.

He was a highly decorated Naval officer, and a devoutly religious man. Maybe it was that mixture that gave him the special perspective that I as a younger man found so instructive.

Here are some of the lessons I learned from my mentor:

“Get out in front of your skis”

Sometimes it’s best to be a little uncomfortable. Sometimes you just need to move from where you are.

“Don’t look over your shoulder”

If you’re not sure whether you’ve got the backing of your team, then you probably need to build a better team. If you’re going the wrong way, they’ll jump in front of you to force a new direction.

“Do your homework, then put it away”

The value is in learning the lesson, not in showing everyone what you know. Build on the knowledge, don’t celebrate it.

“You can build an argument, but you have to earn support”

Collecting evidence to make your case is the easy part. The tough job is selling the case and making it important to others.

There are many other lessons that I learned from my mentor, and each one is remarkable in its breadth of relevance. I can apply those lessons to my work and my life. Every researcher should be so lucky as to have a mentor like mine.

Rick Spinrad, VP for Research

Please enter the conversation! We appreciate your comments to issues raised in this post and others on the Spin on Research blog.

“AN ACT Donating Public Lands
to the several States and Territories
which may provide Colleges
for the Benefit of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.”
– First Morrill Act, 1862

It’s not a usual day when one gets to hear Bill Gates plus two Cabinet Secretaries, yet I was so privileged at the convocation of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) in Washington, DC in late June. The event was a celebration of the Morrill Act of 1862, the enabling legislation for the concept of Land Grant institutions.

I listened carefully throughout the day for hints at the speakers’ perspectives on - what else? – research.

Mr. Gates was quite enthusiastic in his advocacy of extending higher education to broader audiences via – no surprise – technology. He loves that universities already are putting courses on line for hundreds of thousands of students – a first wave of future capabilities. He intimated that such use of technology begs the need for more advances in managing educational content, delivery and assessment. I sat proudly thinking about how OSU is right where we should be on this wave, reaching out to the far corners of the state and the world, and developing better ways to do so.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made an impassioned plea: when you think of agriculture, think beyond food. Think, for instance, textiles. Think biofuels. I appreciated his broadened perspective, which got Dean Arp (sitting next to me at the session) and me thinking about emerging OSU leadership in the intersection of ag sciences and material sciences. In both fields, OSU researchers already hold positions of preeminence.

The presence of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan helped remind me that our researchers are superlative not only in their fields of study, but also in inspiring and training the next generations of researchers – and how that also is integral to our land-grant commitment.

One of my favorite presentations emphasized the role of Land Grant universities in building and sustaining our national strengths in physical sciences and engineering. Dr. Chuck Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering, and past President of MIT, really inspired me to think about our strengths in these areas here at OSU.

The APLU convocation was a great confirmation of what so many of us here know: Land Grant Universities are a linchpin in the technological progress and leadership of our nation. And they have been for a century and a half. Our challenge is to continue to build on that legacy. I imagine our descendants celebrating the Morrill Act with the same enthusiasm at the tercentennial in the year 2162!

Rick Spinrad, Vice President for Research

The Spin on Research

Updates from the VP & the Research Office

Drones have useful applications for OSU

Breaking some china

Industry Partnership Award

Sequestration, Thelma and Louise . . . and Peanut Butter?

Faculty Innovator Award 2012

“Rich was a prolific inventor whose research will have a profound impact on lives well into the future. He submitted 34 invention disclosures in the past 15 years. Rich really believed in the potential impact his discoveries could have on millions of lives.”

“Rich was fiercely independent but passionate about his research making a positive impact. He also cared deeply about teaching and leaves behind a legacy of engineers who will continue making impact. He will be sorely missed.”

Proposal Submission: New Electronic System

Behind the Media Release

“Space, the New Frontier!”

Research Under Ice

Lessons from a Mentor

“Get out in front of your skis”

“Don’t look over your shoulder”

“Do your homework, then put it away”

“You can build an argument, but you have to earn support”

Well-Grounded as a Land-Grant U

Contact Info