There are big misconceptions the public has about his work, said David Zaharoff, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“The general perception is the university funds my research and pays for my students. In reality, you can think of each lab as its own independent company,” Zaharoff said, noting pressure on researchers to come up with funding from outside sources like federal grants. The university supports new faculty, but “within two or three years, you’re expected to be pretty much self-sufficient,” he said.
Pressure also comes from the UA’s goal to be a top-50 public university because research expenditures are a component used to evaluate universities. To boost such research dollars, the engineering college recently established a new position overseeing strategic ways to forge more research opportunities.
Heather Nachtmann began working in July as the college’s new associate dean for research, a half-time appointment as she continues in her role as a professor in UA’s industrial engineering department.
“One of the things we’ve done initially is develop an engineering research council,” Nachtmann said. The nine-person group will include Nachtmann and members from each of UA’s eight engineering departments.
Engineering comprises the second-largest share of research spending at UA behind agriculture, with agriculture research including UA’s Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and UA’s Division of Agriculture (not including the division’s Cooperative Extension Service). Research spending for UA totaled about $125.5 million in the 12-month period that ended on June 30 of last year, with nearly one in five dollars spent on engineering research.
But Nachtmann said there remains a gap between UA and top-50 public universities in engineering research spending and also engineering spending per faculty member.
She noted the hiring last year of John English as engineering dean as another factor in the renewed focus on research. English appointed a task force to identify research strengths and emerging areas, as well as recommendations for improving research output.
“The creation of this task force was really the first time the college had created any kind of formal entity to look specifically at research,” Nachtmann said.
One way colleges have sought to increase their influence on both policy and federal funding decisions has been through lobbyists. The UA has a lobbying firm working on the university’s behalf, according to the university’s website.
The research task force recommended that the engineering college hire its own lobbyists, but “I don’t know whether that will happen,” Nachtmann said. Auburn University has hired lobbyists specifically for its engineering college, according to a 2011 news report.
But while hiring additional lobbyists may not happen, congressional staff members have been invited to tour engineering facilities and meet faculty for a “Federal Day” event later this month. In addition, Nachtmann said she and English may travel to Washington, D.C.
The engineering college also wants to begin giving out about four small grants yearly of perhaps $15,000 to help researchers, Nachtmann said, with such funds hopefully helping with larger grant applications. To succeed with such applications, “oftentimes you need to show a comparative literature review or preliminary results,” Nachtmann said, so the grants can fund summertime work or adding on a graduate student to help a researcher.
The task force report identified electronics, energy, health care system engineering, nanomaterials, and transportation and logistics as existing research strengths.
The group’s report also listed several emerging research areas, including “big data.” Nachtmann said there have been preliminary discussions with the Sam M. Walton College of Business about collaborating on a new institute focused on such analytics.
She cited Zaharoff’s collaborative work with chemistry associate professor Suresh Kumar on potential cancer treatments as the type of multi-disciplinary work she hopes will increase with the new research council.
Zaharoff, who has received more than $3 million in competitive state and federal grants since he joined UA in 2009, said collaborating “really drives the project that much further than you could have taken it yourself.”
A member of the task force and now the council, he said it’s ultimately up to researchers to form such partnerships.
Zaharoff praised the college for its commitment to supporting research.
“I think just the task force itself and the establishment of the research council speaks to the commitment of the college to emphasize research moving forward, because that’s something we didn’t have before,” he said.