On the horizon for research at Brown: more space, more investment, more collaboration

Brown University News Service Director Mark Nickel spoke recently with Vice President for Research Andries van Dam, the Thomas J. Watson Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and professor of computer science, about the direction of Brown's research efforts. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

What areas show the greatest promise for Brown's research future?

In my Opening Convocation address a year ago, I said that the "physics" of the current century will likely be bio-, nano- and info-technology, and their intersection, and I haven't had any reason to change my mind.

Obviously, the life sciences are going to be hugely important - and it isn't your grandfather or grandmother's biology anymore. It's become highly multidisciplinary. Engineering, as another example, is also reinventing itself. Our Division of Engineering has a growing emphasis on what they call soft materials, some of which are biomaterials. So there's an intersection of biology, biochemistry and materials science. There's a lot of activity at Brown in biosensors. Brain science and direct brain-machine interfaces are a growth area - and beautifully multidisciplinary. There are profound clinical applications, some of which are in the very near term, which are very, very cool.

Is much of that growth related to information technology?

Computational X, for most values of X, is a very big thing in the research world and at Brown. At Brown, it includes computational physics, computational chemistry, computational biology and computational specialties within those disciplines. Computational economics uses econometric modeling. Cliometrics is a kind of computational history.

What does Brown's research effort need most?

If you'd have asked a year ago, "What does bio-med need most?" they'd probably have said "Space." You could have heaped arbitrary amounts of money on them, given them arbitrary numbers of positions. But if they had no place to do any of the science, none of that money would have helped. The space problem is being addressed at least in part by the renovated Ship Street building and the Life Sciences Building.

If you'd have asked me three months ago what Computer Science's biggest need was, I would have said "Space." There are grants we cannot apply for because we can't house the equipment to do the work. Our problem will be solved, because CIS will largely be moving out over the next few years and Computer Science will occupy most of the building. So now our biggest problem will be ramping up our grant and contract support and hiring a few top-notch additional faculty in areas where we could be nationally competitive except for a lack of critical mass.

So for many disciplines it's space first, then faculty slots, then support for research equipment, start-up funds for equipping labs, support staff, etc.

Are start-up funds a big concern?

Start-up funds are a great problem for the University as a whole. We are all too often noncompetitive in the size of our start-up packages compared to those of peer research institutions. Recruiting a genuine young superstar now requires a package which, by Brown standards, will be much larger than what colleagues have gotten in the recent past. But we've got to start somewhere, and even if it creates inequities, it's better not to lose those people.

Another real problem is that our graduate student stipends and levels of support are not competitive. Many departments are forced to add their own money to what the Graduate School can do. The numbers there are not as large as they are in support for other aspects of research infrastructure, but it is a clear need.

Brown has always had the philosophy that faculty should take care of their own research: You hustle your own grants and contracts. The University provides space, which we pay for through indirect costs. That arrangement barely buys research equipment and funds technicians to maintain it. We have run exceedingly lean at Brown. While I continue to believe that it is the faculty member's responsibility to provide for the bulk of research support through external funding, I also believe that judicious pump-priming can reap benefits. I believe that if we stimulate research more and invest more in infrastructure, we will reap larger rewards in terms of increased external funding in the future.

Brown's philosophy of hustling your own grants - is that falling victim to history?

The NSF model of the individual P.I. with one or two graduate students is becoming obsolete in many areas of science and engineering. Significant problems are increasingly beyond the scope of an individual. I believe it's all about collaboration in the future, with collaboration distributed both in different departments at Brown and, increasingly, between departments here and at other universities, government labs and industrial facilities. Larger research projects can help create a national and international footprint for research at Brown, so that's where I will focus a significant part of my attention.

Do you use any particular indicators for measuring research health? What should people on campus look for?

A lot of indicators are set out in the Initiatives for Academic Enrichment. There are more people on campus than there were the year before, and we're attracting some astonishing new talent to populate existing departments. For example, the Anthropology Department is full of excitement based on the research they are now able to do with the new people they've hired.

The research seed funding is another significant new component. Certainly the University community should notice new funds that were not there before, to augment the Salomon program. We distributed $287,000 last year and will distribute more than $300,000 this year to departments in the humanities and social sciences, which traditionally have a harder time attracting support from external funding agencies. So that's a research stimulus fund, administered by chairs. We also distributed nearly $400,000 seed funding for large multidisciplinary groups to prepare for writing significant proposals to establish research centers.

Clearly the most visible, tangible indicators of the University's commitment to research are the two new life sciences buildings. What the campus will see over time is that this is the beginning of the next phase of boosting Brown's research capacity: More and more investment will happen, more and more space will be created, more and more groups will coagulate and form centers. More external relationships and partnerships will form, like the very good one with MBL. The graduate program will continue to be boosted so there will be more and better-supported graduate students. The fact that Brown established the office of the vice president for research and has attracted two truly outstanding associate VPs to help run research administration and to build technology partnerships respectively is also a very concrete indicator of growing support for research. These are all very significant investments Brown is making, and they are very visible.

Brown is on the move. Make no mistake about it. The University has been and remains absolutely first-rate as an undergraduate college. The president and the provost are determined to make Brown a first-rate research university across the board, preserving and improving what is already excellent at Brown. That's why I took the job of AVP Research - to help them do that.