A Message from the Senior Vice President
of Research & Strategic Initiatives
By now it is well known around Temple that enhancement of research is a top priority of the university administration. Our goal is to provide a stimulating, supportive environment where research can thrive and grow and where investigators can be successful researchers at all stages of their careers. How do we in the Research Office plan to accomplish this? With people, with facilities, state of the art equipment and shared resources, a number of exciting new initiatives and a university-wide infrastructure which makes it easier to write proposals, transmit proposals, get the proposals funded, and do the research.
Photo: Dr. Larry Lemanski,
Senior Vice President for Research and Strategic Initiatives
Temple University
With respect to people, we have and will continue to hire significant numbers of research-orientated faculty at all levels and in a variety of fields of expertise. These new faculty bring research experience and expertise which complements and extends the research capability of our existing faculty increasing Temple’s ability to compete for external grant funds.
With respect to facilities, we have invested substantial amounts of money in renovating outdated laboratories, building a state of the art BL-3 facility in our medical school, and improving and expanding our animal facilities.
With respect to state of the art equipment and shared resources, we have recently tripled the capacity of the flow cytometry facility and added cell sorting capacity. In addition, a proteomics center has been established at the School of Medicine. We have been providing more extensive information to the University community on the research-orientated expertise available on campus in biostatistics, survey research, and technology transfer.
Finally, with respect to infrastructure and support, we have begun to attack this problem from several different fronts. We have added staff to the Research Office with expertise in obtaining funding from the state, from industry, from private resources. We have added an additional IRB committee. We have invested more than 3 million dollars in seed funding for both our junior and senior faculty to allow them to obtain the necessary data to prepare new proposals and get them funded. In this program we have funded over 100 proposals over the last 18 months and are pleased to report that at least 30 have led to successful funding by external agencies. We have funded special programs which have focused on junior faculty to help them jump start their research careers. We have funded workshops, conferences and symposia to allow and encourage our researchers to meet and interact and hopefully establish collaborations with colleges across campus, within the city and around the world.
Clearly we are off to a good start but we still have a long way to go. I think it is clear that research at Temple is headed in the right direction. I ask all of you to provide me with ideas and feedback to make certain we stay on course and eventually reach our desired destination- the establishment of a stimulating, supportive environment where research can thrive and grow and where investigators can be successful research at all stages of their careers!
