Upcoming webinar: Measuring Research Impact for Internal Audiences and Government Relations, Feb. 23, 2 p.m. ET 

Please join us on Tuesday, Feb. 23 for a presentation from IRIS Technical Director Kevin Bjorne on two recently released IRIS reports: the Spending Report and the Legislative Fact Sheets. 

The Spending Report tracks the types of employees funded by sponsored research and how that varies by funding agency, and provides a national and regional view of research-related spending on goods and services from each IRIS member university. The report also benchmarks individual university's against the entire group of IRIS members.

The Legislative Fact Sheets break out research-related spending and employment by state, and by federal and state legislative district. This is meant to help government relations representatives and others show the impact of research spending as new lawmakers take office.

Kevin's presentation will go over the data in each report and take any questions.

Applications open for IRIS online summer workshop — Joining the Data Revolution: Big Data in Education and Social Science Research, June 1-11, 2021

This will be the second year that IRIS has offered this NSF-supported workshop, aimed at helping researchers in education and social science gain the tools and skills needed to secure grant funding for data-driven research.

Offered through the ICPSR Summer Program, the workshop will run from June 1-11, from 1 - 5 p.m. ET. The hands-on workshop will give participants training in using large-scale restricted-use data. No prior experience in quantitative data analysis is required.

The application deadline is March 22.

Save the Date: IRIS Annual Meeting, March 18, 2021 

Because of the pandemic, we've replaced the IRIS Summit with a virtual Annual Meeting scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday, March 18, 2021.

The agenda includes a "State of IRIS" talk and an overview of IRIS' work on the impact of the COVID shutdowns on research universities from IRIS Executive Director Jason Owen-Smith.

More details will be forthcoming soon.

IRIS Board elections set for spring 

There are four vacancies on the IRIS Board of Directors that will be filled in an election scheduled for late April and early May.

Members serve two- or three-year terms; there are typically two scheduled meetings of the board each year.

Please send nominations, including self-nominations, to Nancy Calvin-Naylor at nbirk@umich.edu. Nominations should include a short bio and statement of vision for IRIS, not to exceed 1 page combined.