Vice President's Message

Advanced Energy Research Center to Provide Opportunities for Collaboration

As we move toward identifying a new Associate Vice President for Research, with the primary charge of assisting, supporting and facilitating the development and successful submission of multidisciplinary research proposals, I am writing to remind you that a major new opportunity for such work across a very broad range of campus programs is being created by the new Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center. The Center's mission embraces making alternative energy affordable, making conventional energy more efficient and making energy conservation efforts more effective, and making all forms of energy use more environmentally friendly. Clearly there is scope here for collaborations among engineers, physical scientists, life scientists, marine scientists, and social scientists. Since we know that sponsors have become sophisticated in distinguishing "real" cooperative programs with records of past collaboration from "paper" initiatives whose participants have no such track record, and that efforts of great magnitude often emerge from modest beginnings, I want to remind you of this office's interdisciplinary seminar series. Under this program, the Office of the Vice President for Research will supply $100 toward a speaker's luncheon when your department invites a Stony Brook colleague from an unrelated discipline to give a seminar. Please contact Ann-Marie Scheidt amscheidt@notes.cc.sunysb.edu to determine eligibility. You will be asked to provide a copy of the seminar notice annotated with the number of attendees and a brief description of any anticipated collaborations with the speaker's department. While we expect the new Associate Vice President to provide dynamic additional leadership in this area, we stand ready now to assist nascent efforts with administrative support in pulling these often complex proposals together as well as to contribute to their fertilization through the seminar program.

Good News and Coming Events

News

Computer Science

Professor Erez Zadok has received a prestigious 2006 IBM Faculty Award of $20,000. These awards are intended to recognize outstanding faculty and to promote innovative, collaborative research in disciplines of mutual interest to IBM and the researcher. Zadok is a first-time recipient of the award. IBM Faculty Awards are competitive awards that are renewable annually.

Zadok's collaboration with IBM will focus on provisioning for end-to-end file server security. Using the new standard of the Network File System protocol version 4 (NFSv4), Zadok is developing a flexible system that would encrypt user's files all the way from the client to the back-end server's storage disks. The system will also check the integrity of users' files against malicious modifications in transit, and even compress files transparently on the server. The combination of these benefits will result in an efficient and secure system where users can store their files safely on network file servers that may be hosted on the other side of the globe.

Geosciences

Justin Filiberto, who graduated this August with a Ph.D., was selected for the Stephen E. Dwornik Student Research Paper Award, which was established in 1991 to encourage students to become involved with NASA and planetary science. The award, which is given for the best student presentations at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, consists of a plaque and a $500 check. Justin won the award for his work on finding a potential terrestrial analog to magmas that gave rise to the SNC Martian Meteorites.

Materials Science and Engineering

Minhua Shao, a graduate student pursuing his Ph.D., has won the second annual Dr. Mow Shiah Lin Scholarship. The scholarship was established by the Asian Pacific American Association at Brookhaven National Lab to honor the late distinguished Brookhaven Lab scientist for which it is named. In honor of Lin's research, achievements, and inventions, the scholarship is granted annually to an Asian immigrant with a student visa. Shao's research focuses on designing and developing platinum-free or low-platinum electrocatalysts that will significantly lower the cost of producing fuel cells.

Events

October 17: "The Politics of Science Education," by Helen Quinn

The C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy present a Sir Run Run Shaw Distinguished Lecture and Colloquium. Helen Quinn is an internationally-known theoretical physicist at Stanford University and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and former president of the American Physical Society. Harriman Hall, rm. P-137, 4:15pm.

Provost's Lecture Series

October 17: "The Vinland Map: Maybe it's Not a Fake After All"

Dr. Garman Harbottle, emeritus Senior Chemist at Brookhaven National Lab, is an expert in identifying and dating works of art and archaeology. He has received national and international acclaim, most recently he won the 2002 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America. 4pm in Wang Center, rm. 201.

October 26: "Astronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance: Clarifying the Nature of Trust in Science and Religion"

Guy Consolmango is curator of the Vatican Meteorite Collection, one of the largest meteorite collections in the world. Dr. Consolmango's research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. He is currently the Vice-Chair of the Division of Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society. The talk is presented in conjunction with the Templeton Lecture Series. 4pm, Harriman Hall, rm. 137.

Wine Center Events

October 19: "Stellar New American Cuisine"

Chef Elmer Rubio, who came to the United States in 1989 from El Salvador, began his career at the Mill River Inn in Oyster Bay. Today, after serving in the kitchens of some of Long Island's top chefs, he is the chef-owner of the Chachama Grill. 6:30-8:00 p.m.

$55.00 for the first person $45.00 for every person in the group after that $40.00 for one person, for three or more events at the same location

Location: Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University Note: You must be 21 or over to participate in wine-tasting events. Registration and payment are required for attendance. Please register as early as possible, as space is limited. Please note that the Center has a 48-hour pre-event cancellation policy.

November 16-18: Civic Performance: Building Bridges to a Better Tomorrow

This three-day conference presented by the Humanities Institute will explore the complex issues facing Long Island, bringing together the University, local communities, scholars, and performers.

Day 1: Sustainability—Immigration and the Long Island Economy
Day 2: Surviving the Teenage Years—Youth and Violence
Sponsored by the Frances L. Brisbane Leadership and Service Foundation
Day 3: Protecting Long Island’s Ecosystem—Competing Interests for Improving the Environment

Pre-Conference Lantern Procession Ceremony at Stony Brook University
Wednesday, November 15, 8:00 pm
A Symbolic Coming Together of Community
Special rates for students and seniors
For more information visit: www.stonybrook.edu/humanities

Opportunities and Sponsor Information

Rowland Junior Fellows Program

The Rowland Institute at Harvard is soliciting applications for their Junior Fellows program. The fellows will perform experimental research for five years with full institutional support. Candidates in the sciences and engineering will be considered with special attention paid to interdisciplinary work and new experimental methods. Most candidates will have just completed a Ph.D. or have up to two years post-doctoral experience. The deadline for applications is November 1. Applicants should send a cv and a one page research proposal, and have three letters of reference sent to:

Dr. Michael M. Burns
Rowland Junior Fellows Program
Rowland Institute at Harvard
100 Edwin H. Land Boulevard
Cambridge, MA 12142

For more information please visit: www.rowland.harvard.edu

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now accepting online applications for its five Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs)

The five LRPs offered by the NIH include the Clinical Research LRP, Clinical Research LRP for Individuals from Disadvantaged Backgrounds, Contraception and Infertility Research LRP, Health Disparities LRP, and Pediatric Research LRP.

Through these programs, the NIH offers to repay up to $35,000 annually of the qualified educational debt of health professionals pursuing careers in biomedical and behavioral research. The programs also provide coverage for Federal and state tax liabilities.

To qualify, applicants must possess a doctoral-level degree, devote 50% or more of their time (20 hours per week based on a 40-hour work week) to research funded by a domestic non-profit organization or government entity (Federal, state, or local), and have educational loan debt equal to or exceeding 20% of their institutional base salary. Applicants must also be U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or U.S. nationals to be eligible.

All applications for 2007 awards must be submitted online by 8:00 p.m. EST, December 1, 2006. For an online application, program information, or other assistance, visit the LRP Web site at www.lrp.nih.gov, telephone the Help desk at
866-849-4047, or send email inquiries to lrp@nih.gov

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

For a complete list of upcoming deadlines, please go to -
http://www.stonybrook.edu/research/fndopp/deadlcal.html

Interdisciplinary Seminars

Please remember that, in an effort to encourage interdisciplinary research on campus, this office will supply $100 toward a speaker's luncheon when your department invites a Stony Brook colleague from an unrelated discipline to give a seminar. Please contact Ann-Marie Scheidt amscheidt@notes.cc.sunysb.edu to determine eligibility. You will be asked to provide a copy of the seminar notice annotated with the number of attendees and a brief description of any anticipated collaborations with the speaker's department.

Music for Meetings

Please remember that the OVPR would like to assist those of you who are planning a research meeting on campus by providing musical interludes. If you would like to have Stony Brook student musicians play at the reception for your meeting it can be arranged by contacting Ann-Marie Scheidt amscheidt@notes.cc.sunysb.edu. Arrangements must be made with this office in advance of the meeting. OVPR will make a payment to the Department of Music and the Department in turn pays the students. You get to listen to some nice music.

NIH Changes Standard Receipt Dates for Applications

On October 5, 2006, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced broad changes in its standard receipt dates for applications. The changes become effective as of January, 2007. The basic research, R01, applications will be due on February 5, June 5 and October 5 each year. In most cases, the receipt dates add a few days to the old dates with some exceptions. For example, program project and center grant applications are now due January 25, May 25, and September 25; five or six days earlier than the former first of the month deadlines. The new receipt dates are outlined in a notice published in the October 5, 2006 NIH Guide. See:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-001.html for details.

NIH made these changes to ease any potential bottlenecks with electronic submission through Grants.gov and NIH's eRA Commons systems. NIH hopes the shift to new receipt dates assists institutional research offices as well by redistributing the deadlines away from high volume days used by other agencies.

Parent Announcements for Unsolicited NIH Proposals

On October 10, 2006, NIH posted a series of Parent Announcements for unsolicited or investigator-initiated applications. The announcements can be found at:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm
NIH created these parent (or standard) application announcements to accommodate the need for a specific funding announcement to facilitate the electronic submission of applications. The parent announcements currently available cover grant mechanisms that require electronic submission through Grants.gov to the NIH eRA Commons. NIH plans to develop an omnibus Parent announcement by November 2, 2006 for the most widely used grant mechanism, the research project grant (the R01), for use by applicants who wish to submit what were formerly termed "unsolicited" applications.

Unless an applicant is responding to a specific announcement, they're submitting an investigator-initiated or unsolicited proposal. The new Parent announcements are NIH-wide, but some NIH institutes may limit their participation, so applicants should check the announcement's statement of interest. Parent announcements will not generally be available for specialized grant mechanisms (e.g. resource programs, construction grants, or education projects).

Just to review: a Program Announcement (PA) identifies areas of increased priority and/or emphasis on particular funding mechanisms for a specific area of science. Applications are usually accepted on the standard receipt dates on an on-going basis. Most investigators apply under a program announcement. A Request for Application (RFA) identifies a more narrowly defined area for which one or more NIH institutes have set aside funds for awarding grants, usually with a single identified receipt date. A Request for Proposal (RFP) solicits contract proposals with, generally, one receipt date. Thus, the Parent Announcements do not describe specific areas of priority or emphasis, special receipt, referral or review considerations and are not linked to set-aside funds. The Parent does provide a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) number and access to the correct application package for submission through Grants.gov

CDC Moves to Electronic Submission

On October 5, 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave notice in the Federal Register that all applications in response to program announcements and requests for applications will be submitted through Grants.gov The CDC uses the PHS/NIH forms for submissions and eRA Commons as its electronic tracking system. As with other Grants.gov posted Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA), the appropriate forms package will be identified in the FOA.

Essential Policies, Procedures and Resources

15% IDC Rate for SBIR / STTR Phase 1 Subcontracts to SBU Investigators

The Office of the Vice President for Research and the Center for Biotechnology are pleased to announce a new initiative concerning Research Foundation awards that result from Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) projects awarded to companies. Effective 10/1/06, the Research Foundation will assess a facilities and administrative (aka IDC) cost rate of 15% of total direct costs on all such new subcontract awards. Since Phase 1 awards are limited to $80K and $150K (new NSF max.) depending upon awarding institute, as well as a percentage of funds that are subcontract eligible, this has discouraged collaborations between industry and our university researchers. STTR awards permit the academic collaborator to apply as Principal Investigator, but all SBIR and STTR are awarded to the small business with subcontracts to the university. Our hope is that a reduced IDC rate through this initiative, will spark corporate and Stony Brook University collaborations, and lead to long term scientific and business interactions. This initiative shall be evaluated for effectiveness after a one year period. Please note that Phase 2 SBIR and STTRs are not covered under this initiative but can provide up to $750,000 total for collaborative commercialization research. Only a successful Phase 1 project is eligible for application for a Phase 2 grant. Further information on the SBIR/STTR Program can be found at http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/SBIR/

Should anyone have any questions please contact Ivar Strand, Assistant VP for Sponsored Programs at 2-4402 or via e-mail at IStrand@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

For More Information

Gail S. Habicht is Vice President for Research. She can be reached at (631) 632-7932. An abundance of specific information for the research community is available on our Website, where past issues of this bulletin can also be found.

Office of the Vice President for Research -
http://www.stonybrook.edu/research/

Monday Memo archive - http://www.stonybrook.edu/research/monmemo/mmarchive.html

All Past issue of Monday Memo are keyword searchable.

And if you are challenged by the embarrassment of riches in the over 2,000 individual Web pages that comprise the Website, you may find the alphabetical site index helpful. The index can be accessed at - http://www.stonybrook.edu/research/index2.html.

If you have information you would like to contribute to Monday Memo please email it to the editor, Adnan Rangwala, at marc.dempsey@stonybrook.edu