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  • 1.  New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Posted Mon July 07, 2025 13:38

    πŸš€ New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Every Monday, the AI Working Group will post a high-interest discussion prompt focused on how AI is being used in real, everyday research administration tasks. Whether it's drafting an email, summarizing a policy, or helping with data entry-these are practical, real-life examples we want to learn from you.

    πŸ“£ We invite all NCURA members to join the conversation.

    Tried something new with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or another AI tool? Surprised by how Copilot cleaned up that spreadsheet? Delighted by a meeting agenda that practically wrote itself? Maybe it summarized a messy email thread into something readable-or turned a dense policy into plain language. However AI showed up in your workflow last week, we want to hear about it-come share your experience!

    πŸ‘‰ And don't keep it to yourself-invite a colleague or an NCURA friend to join the AI Community and jump into the discussion too!

    πŸ”— Join us here: AI Community Site
    Note: Be sure to login first with your NCURA credentials to access the community and respond.

    We can't wait to see what you've been working on-and how AI is (or isn't) helping. Check back each week for a new prompt and keep the conversation going all week long!



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    Lisa Wilson
    Assistant Vice President, Office of Research Administration
    Emory University
    2025 NCURA AI Working Group Chair
    Atlanta, GA
    lisa.wilson@...
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  • 2.  RE: New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Posted Mon July 07, 2025 16:55

    (Long post incoming)

    My Strategy for Generating New Reports with AI

    I would like to share a prompt that I recently created for a task related to generating new reports. This task previously required manual effort and various sources to finalize a summarized report. More specifically, I used this prompt to create a new report using an older report file as the template and incorporated the same file(s) and additional sources used to create the original.


    The prompt:

    "Use the attached [previous report/template] as a structural guide to generate a new [report/summary/plan] for [time period or project]. Incorporate relevant data from the attached [task log/spreadsheet], and enrich the content with examples or insights found in my [emails/chats/documents]. Align the output with the categories or evaluation criteria found in the original report.

    Can this be done?"

    Why "Can This Be Done?" Matters

    I found this allowed me to see what steps would be taken and essentially initiated an assistant like response to what I was trying to produce. Meaning, the model asked follow-up questions before finalizing its actions (at least with the MS 365 Copilot model I used).

    Key Outcomes and Tips

    I have tried prompts like this in the past and the biggest impact was the ability of the model to extract information from excel (spreadsheet) files. I can attest that this has improved, but caution those who want to use this prompt, that you may need to reformat an excel file for 'extractability'. Merged cells and complex header structure in a spreadsheet can sometime confuse the model. 

    You can search online for help on 'Formatting requirements for excel and LLM Summarization'. 



    ------------------------------
    Tubal Yisrael
    Research Training Coordinator
    Emory University
    Atlanta, GA
    (404) 727-6123
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  • 3.  RE: New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Posted Tue July 08, 2025 20:08

    Thanks so much for sharing, Tubal! I look forward to using "can this be done?" in my prompts.

    AI tends to take shortcut so I always add "review the attached document in its entirety" or "review the attachments carefully" in my prompts. Curious any tips from others?



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    Youyou Cheng
    Deputy Director, SPFA
    Yale University
    25 Science Park
    New Haven, CT 06511
    203-785-4370
    youyou.cheng@...
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Posted Thu July 17, 2025 21:19
    Edited by Francine Davis Thu July 17, 2025 21:19

    Admittedly, I wasn't a fan of using AI tools, but I do find Co-Pilot to be a game changer. The ease of using the prompts in emails and spreadsheets has been a timesaver. I really appreciated the value when I had to put a presentation together and used Co-Pilot to reformat the content. It was super easy and flowed better that what I originally drafted. This is a great tool!



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    Francine Davis
    Sr Director, Research Administration
    Emory University
    Atlanta, GA
    (404) 727-4381
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  • 5.  RE: New Weekly Series: Share How You're Using AI in RA!

    Posted Mon July 21, 2025 09:22

    Monday, July 21, 2025

    Fran, thanks for sharing this and ... I really appreciate your honesty.  I know many of us can relate. A lot of people start out skeptical, but once they try a tool like Copilot in their everyday workflows, the time savings and quality improvements become hard to ignore.

    Your example of using Copilot to reformat a presentation is spot-on (baby boomer jargon). It's not about replacing our work-it's about refining it. Sometimes AI just helps us say what we were already trying to say, only smoother and faster.

    Thanks for playing, Fran!



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    Lisa Wilson
    Interim Assistant Vice President, Office of Research Administration
    Emory University
    Atlanta, GA
    4705721794
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


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