I am a part-time student in Rush University's on-line Master's Program in Research Administration. My day job is Assistant Director of Administration at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University. I am formulating a Master's thesis project in which I would like to focus on international research collaborations, and specifically what institutions are doing to help their investigators identify sources of non-U.S. funding. U.S. research dollars are more scarce, more international collaboration is going to be needed to solve global challenges, and Europe's R&D spending forecast (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6141/21.full.pdf?sid=646bcc97-d24f-4718-8313-adff5ff75400, released July 5, 2013) seems to indicate continued support of research.
The inspiration for my project came from my reading of "The Current Health and Future Well-Being of the American Research University" and "Knowledge, networks and nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century".
My first step is to establish which institutions are successfully attracting foreign research support. The data I am proposing to collect appear to be standard areas of metrics tracked by institutions. I am just not sure if institutions (other than my own) would be willing to share that data with me? So, I am "sounding out" the NCURA International Community to gauge how feasible my project is. Here are the kinds of data fields I propose collecting to establish "success" and as a measure against which I can gauge my institution's performance in this area:
- Number of proposals vs. awards from foreign sponsors
- Total dollars awarded from foreign sponsors
- % per research faculty
- Types (grants vs. contracts vs. collaborations/cooperative agreements).
- The "make up" of the research at a specific institution, each institution's focus - e.g. focus on minorities, homeless vs. obesity vs Cancer, AIDS, environmental pollutions, etc.
Finally, I came across a 1988 briefing to the U.S. Senate (http://archive.gao.gov/d34t11/135368.pdf), prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office, that examined "Foreign Sponsorship of U.S. University Research." That report found that, at that time, only 1 percent of all university R&D expenditures was sponsored by foreign sources. I am curious if your institution has ever been asked to participate in a similar survey since that time? I think it would be really interesting to discuss if the questions are still relevant, and to find out how much has changed in the last 20 years.
I should stress that this is a project for my Master's degree program, and not a project sponsored by my institution, though being conducted with the full support of my institution.
Thank you in advance.
Gai
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Gai Doran
Center Assistant Director, Administration
Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS
Yale University
New Haven CT
203-764-4342
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