From the Vice President
As we embark on a new year, there is an unmistakable sense of optimism that 2021 will hold better fortune than last year.
Despite the challenges of 2020, we were able to push our mission forward, continuing on paths of discovery, invention and innovation.
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The UF initiative in artificial intelligence is accelerating rapidly with the assembly of new instrumentation and the recruitment of new talent.
We are also committed to positive change in society through the research initiative on racial disparities and injustice that was launched near the end of 2020.
Moving into 2021, we will certainly find new opportunities and challenges that the research enterprise here at UF will meet head on.
It is such a privilege to be a part of the team here at UF. I look forward to seeing what new things lie over the horizon.
– David Norton
Vice President for Research
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– Jump ahead with our Table of Contents –
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UF Awards Faculty Nearly $1 Million To Study Racial Disparities
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The University of Florida is committing nearly $1 million to faculty research projects focused on racial disparities in health care, diversity in professional programs, challenges in developing and teaching an inclusive curriculum, and strategies for creating a more inclusive campus environment.
UF Research and the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer have been working together since June to support programs that reflect UF President Kent Fuchs’ call for a wide-ranging examination of race relations at the university.
Over the last few weeks, UF Research has awarded $970,000 to more than a dozen faculty teams across campus.
The projects funded include one that addresses racial disparities in clinical trials of treatments for some of the nation’s most prevalent chronic diseases, like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and heart and kidney disease.
“The diseases affect more than 50 million Americans, with the highest rates and worse outcomes observed among Black Americans for whom these diseases account for 40% of all deaths,” said Dr. Azra Bihorac, an associate professor of medicine and principal investigator on the project. “Although it is imperative that clinical trials for new therapies include Black participants, the data does not support that mandate. In one major trial of a new class of medications for diabetes, only 4% of the 102,000 participants were Black.”
Another project, led by psychology Professor Emeritus Carolyn Tucker, is looking at why older Black individuals are reluctant to take advantage of traditional health care and whether they might be more likely to use telehealth options that have grown significantly during the pandemic.
“COVID-19 called national attention to the occurrence of multiple chronic health disparity diseases among Blacks and older adults, particularly those with low incomes and living in urban areas,” Tucker said. “And while there has been a rapid expansion of telehealth, this expansion did not occur among these most vulnerable populations; furthermore, this expansion occurred without consideration of the readiness for or views toward telehealth among these individuals.”
Tucker’s team will survey 300 older Black men and women in Gainesville and Jacksonville to gain insights into their perceived barriers to utilizing traditional health care options and to understand how telehealth can be used more effectively with this community.
Several projects are focusing on the development of a more inclusive curriculum across the university.
Kathryn Russell-Brown, professor and director of the Levin College of Law’s Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, aims to develop a new framework for helping faculty incorporate race, racial justice and the Black experience into the curriculum.
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“This project has three goals,” Russell-Brown said. “First, to identify the institutional support faculty members say is necessary to pursue a racial justice research agenda related to the Black experience. Second, to identify the components of a successful professional development program responsive to feedback by UF faculty and based on best practices. Third, to initiate the scaffolding for this institutional rewiring on racial justice curriculum development.”
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Kathryn Russell-Brown
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Brown’s team aims to create a comprehensive database of UF faculty who have expertise on race-related subjects, specifically the Black experience, and use that expertise to strengthen relations among these scholars and with students and the university administration.
“This plan builds on the momentum of prior efforts to generate a UF curriculum on race and anti-racism that offers a substantive knowledge base to students and institutional support to faculty,” Russell-Brown said. “It meets the needs identified by core UF stakeholders as a response to the country’s current racial climate and it helps to create significant institutional change and momentum by relying upon expertise among UF’s faculty.”
Other projects focus on the student experience.
Dr. Duane Mitchell, professor of neurosurgery and director of UF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, is leading an effort to identify barriers to success for Black professionals in the biomedical field and to develop strategies for them to thrive.
“Biomedical research is integral to translation of scientific findings to healthcare policy and clinical bedside practice,” Mitchell said. “Biomedical professionals who themselves identify as Black, and understand issues relevant to the Black community, are most qualified to produce culturally sensitive research.
Mitchell’s team is taking a qualitative approach that will include conducting interviews with 30 Black biomedical professionals and completing rigorous narrative analysis of their stories. The project will then host a storytelling event that showcases five new Black professionals telling their stories.
“Our project harnesses the universal, culturally relevant power of personal storytelling, grounded theoretically in the life story tradition to amplify and celebrate the Black scientists and biomedical professionals' experience – that is, Black voices in research at UF,” Mitchell said.
“Our goal is to leverage UF’s multidisciplinary research strengths to develop solutions to the many health, education and economic disparities that affect people of color, on our campus, in our country and around the world,” said David Norton, UF’s vice president for research.
UF Chief Diversity Officer Antonio Farias is encouraging all grant recipients to share their research, be it in progress or completed, at an Antiracism Symposium scheduled for next Fall.
“It’s encouraging to see the power of research at UF unabashedly take on racial justice.” Farias said. “We expect these projects to be catalysts for wider interdisciplinary efforts underway to diversify our faculty, understand implicit bias and remove barriers to success.”
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Sobha Jaishankar
Assistant Vice President for Research and director of the Division of Research Program Development
Sobha Jaishankar started out as a biochemist, but a proclivity for uniting experts across disciplines evolved into a career helping researchers build interdisciplinary teams – and win funding to fuel their ideas. Now, Jaishankar helps researchers across UF find collaborators and build unique grant proposals.
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She said her favorite part is watching multifaceted projects grow in unanticipated directions. Some have also become hallmarks of UF’s research landscape, including the Florida Climate Institute and the Informatics Institute.
“We help researchers write up these incredible projects, and then we let them go,” Jaishankar said. “It’s just fun to watch that project evolve.”
She previously studied cancer, using mice as models to study the disease’s genetic causes. It was as the director of the Tennessee Mouse Genome Consortium – the country’s only statewide network of researchers collaborating to identify and study genetic diseases in mice – that she began helping teams of other scientists build interdisciplinary research proposals from the ground up. She was an assistant professor of molecular science at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and eventually oversaw the protection of human research subjects there.
Jaishankar arrived at UF in 2005 and has since helped faculty win the university’s first two interdisciplinary grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, totaling nearly $3 million, and helped secure more state funding for research centers than any other university in Florida. In the last eight years, the team of proposal specialists she oversees has helped prepare proposals totaling more than $300 million.
But the real thrill, she said, is seeing fresh research ideas in their earliest stages, from projects aimed at advancing racial justice to neuroscientists hoping to educate the next generation of experts.
“I love to see the creativity and the passion of the faculty. No two days are alike,” Jaishankar said. “The thrill is to watch and see how these partnerships get built and how their sum really becomes much bigger than the parts.”
She said that her mission is to facilitate faculty creativity. Her broad interest in research is founded in a passion for helping projects with the potential to benefit humankind succeed.
“A lot of times, people tend to get worried about the system part of submitting a proposal – the deadlines, the minutiae of the forms – people can get bogged down,” Jaishankar said. “But there are people that can help with all different aspects of putting together a research project. Our goal is to help them write the most compelling project description possible.”
UF’s Division of Research Program Development recently coordinated the award of 20 grants totaling $1 million to researchers across the university implementing artificial intelligence into their research. The division’s annual seed grant program is accepting proposals until Jan. 29.
The Division of Research Program Development can be reached at 352-392-4804.
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DSP Awards Team
The Division of Sponsored Programs (DSP) Awards Team is here to help you navigate the award setup and management process. Please ask us questions and provide us with the opportunity to reduce administrative burden. Whether you have one simple question or a series of complex hypothetical scenarios, please reach out and dialogue with our team of sponsored programs experts.
Setup of a new award is a collaborative process in UF’s award management tool, UFIRST, between unit research administrators, the PI, faculty, members of the research team, DSP, and Contracts and Grants (C&G). As this collaboration involves a number of handoffs, we offer various instructional guides and toolkits to streamline the process and help ensure consistency for all users.
We know you are excited to initiate your project and dive into the research; after all, this is what the sponsor is paying you for! Understanding the terms and conditions and engaging with our professional team can help ensure you stay on the right path. We are here to help reduce the burden of navigating the various sponsor terms and conditions and prior approval requirements associated with your project. As all federal sponsored awards and many non-governmental sponsors are based on 2 CFR 200, DSP's website is a useful tool with links to commonly used resources, including guidance documents from the NIH, the NSF, and USDA NIFA.
Wondering if something is permissible according to the terms and conditions? Curious if the intended direction is allowable? Pondering the best way to approach an award management question? Contact us if you are unsure, as the DSP Awards Team is here to assist the campus community should you need guidance. Please keep in mind it is much easier to ask questions up front to help ensure we have a consistent message when communicating with our external partners.
We congratulate you on a successful research proposal and look forward to assisting you. We are accessible and can be reached at ufawards@ufl.edu or by contacting a member of the Awards Team via the DSP Staff Directory. |
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Research Development Spotlight
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The National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is soliciting proposals for grants that support arts projects that use the arts to unite and heal in response to current events; celebrate our creativity and cultural heritage; invite mutual respect for differing beliefs and values; and enrich humanity.
The NEA is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and fostering mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all individuals and groups. The Arts Endowment encourages projects that use the arts to unite and heal in response to current events, as well as address any of the following:
- Celebrate America’s creativity and/or cultural heritage.
- Invite a dialogue that fosters a mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.
- Enrich our humanity by broadening our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as a society.
- Originate from or are in collaboration with the following constituencies encouraged by White House Executive Orders:
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities,
- Tribal Colleges and Universities,
- American Indian and Alaska Native tribes,
- African American Serving Institutions,
- Hispanic Serving Institutions,
- Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and
- Organizations that support the independence and lifelong inclusion of people with disabilities.
An organization may submit only one application under these FY 2022 Grants for Arts Projects guidelines, with few exceptions. Interested scholars should submit a concept for internal consideration to UF Research Program Development by 9 a.m. on Jan. 8. If there are multiple concepts, they will be submitted to a committee of ad hoc reviewers for ranking.
For more information, go to https://ufresearch.infoready4.com/#competitionDetail/1830732 or contact Research Program Development at limitedprograms@research.ufl.edu
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The Spencer Foundation
The Spencer Foundation – the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research – is inviting applications for its Research Grants on Education program, which provides support to education research projects with the potential to contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived.
The foundation supports work that fosters creative and open-minded scholarship, engages in deep inquiry, and examines robust questions related to education. The program supports proposals with multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, and from scholars at various stages in their career.
Proposals may span a wide range of topics and disciplines that creatively investigate questions central to education, including anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, and neuroscience.
Researchers may incorporate data from multiple and varied sources spanning a sufficient length of time as to achieve a depth of understanding and/or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project. Research may utilize a wide array of research methods and techniques, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed, ethnographic, design-based, participatory, and historical. Projects that thoughtfully consider the trajectories, implications, and potential impacts of their findings, including how the knowledge may be shared and utilized across the field, in practice, in policy making, and/or with the broader public, are encouraged. (The program is “field-initiated,” in that proposals are not requested in response to a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method.)
Through the program, projects with budgets ranging from $125,000 to $500,000 over one to five years will be considered.
Letters of Intent to apply are due Jan. 15. Upon review, selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal by February 5.
See the Spencer Foundation website for complete program guidelines and application instructions.
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