New Pilot Initiatives
We are excited to announce two Pilot Initiatives to grow the breadth and quality of research using the CharFac. In FY25 we are effectively tapping a portion of our CSE support to provide instrument and staff time for (1) exploratory analytical work to serve new grant proposals, and (2) scholarly collaborations and methods development.
Pilot Initiative #1 is intended to serve faculty members who are either (a) heavy recent (3-year) users of the CharFac who are developing a proposal for a new line of research; or (b) light or non-users of the CharFac. Analogous programs exist in other (“peer”) facilities at UMN and at other universities, but until now the CharFac has not gone down this path. When this program is launched, the CharFac will (i) clarify eligibility, (ii) provide documentation (i.e. forms for proposed work and final summary), and (iii) consult faculty adviser(s) for the assessment of proposals as needed.
Pilot Initiative #2 is intended to formally cover staff effort that is typically not cost-recovered or logged via facility charges (or is very difficult to do so), within two themes: (a) scholarly collaborations with faculty (typically the effort expended in discussions leading up to and during CharFac work plus later effort during writing stages); (b) methods and expertise development involving newer instrumentation, modalities or sample types/constructs. Case (b) will augment funding that some staff members already tap within industrial-collaborative work (e.g., via IPRIME) and occasionally via faculty-collaborative work; but these funding avenues usually run far short of what is needed to fully develop CharFac capabilities and expertise, given increasingly complex and multifaceted instrumentation and data analysis as well as increasingly complex target applications, whether in engineering materials and devices, life/health sciences or earth/environmental research.
It should be noted that the above initiatives add to, and expand on, an ongoing initiative announced a few years ago: the case of preliminary staff work to serve collaborative grant proposals (e.g., two in the past year in earth/environmental sci/eng).
In all of the above cases we are eager to address questions and discuss possibilities. Please contact Greg Haugstad (haugs001@umn.edu) and/or Javier Garcia-Barriocanal (javigb@umn.edu) for general discussions, but please do not hesitate to directly contact others on staff (cse.umn.edu/charfac/scientific-staff) per the technical topic. In the near future we will converge on the final format of initiatives #1-2 in consultation with the CharFac advisory board.