Core Facilities Highlight

Recently the X-Ray Crystallography Center in the Merkert building installed a new Bruker D8 VENTURE Single Crystal Diffractometer that was purchased with funds awarded to the facility Director, Dr. Bo Li, through a $428,327 S10 Shared Instrumentation Award from the National Institutes of Health. The new Diffractometer will support the research activities of numerous faculty members in the Chemistry Department, and their students, including Peter Zhang, Amir Hoveyda, Jianmin Gao, Shih-Yuan Liu, James Morken, and Abhishek Chatterjee. Dr. Li has been at Boston College since 2008 when he arrived from SUNY Albany, where he received his PhD and worked as a staff crystallographer.  

The mission of the X-Ray Crystallography Center is to provide high quality X-ray structural analysis of small molecules for researchers at Boston College using single crystal samples. Understanding molecular structure is essential to numerous aspects of research in Chemistry, and faculty, staff, and students in the Chemistry Department regularly employ the Center in their federally funded research projects, publications, and academic activities. Specifically, Dr. Li often collaborates with BC faculty on their research projects and co-authors high impact research papers with them.

Design and Innovation Strategies Updates

Updates from VPR, Department of Design & Innovation Strategies, are classified under three streams of initiatives :

1) DESIGN STUDIES (NEW CREDIT BEARING COURSES): 

• Ethical Design For Senior Social Innovation: In addition to the design courses already being offered at BC, a new lecture plus hand-on design course has been introduced this semester as a pilot. The course is about ethics in design/engineering situations and built on principles of reflection, discernment and design thinking. It is being co-taught by an ethicist and a designer.  
• Design for Impact: The 2023 inter-institutional interdisciplinary design course including Architects from Clemson, Engineers from Virginia Tech, Industrial Designers from NC State and Liberal Arts students from BC) was recently kicked off at Clemson University. The mixed student teams this semester are collaborating to address ‘Designing Life Transitions’ which will be entered in the 2023 Stanford Longevity Challenge competition. The course was designed by Dr. Julia DeVoy, Lynch School and supported by VPR.

 2023 ‘Design For Impact’ – inter-institutional collaborative design kick-off at Clemson U.

2) DESIGN METHODS IN RESEARCH: 

• RPCA – SSW’s paper ‘Applying Human-Centered Design in Global Mental Health to Improve Reach Among Underserved Populations in the United States and India’ encompassing co-design processes got published in the Global Health: Science and Practice 2023 | Volume 11 | Number 1
• RPCA – SSW (in conjunction with PI Prof. Desrosiers, Brown University): ‘Applying Design Thinking Processes to Develop mHealth Tools to Improve Delivery of an Evidence-based Mental Health Intervention in Sierra Leonean Schools’ has been selected for presentation at the 12th Global Mental Health Research without Borders Conference next month in DC.
• Nursing – CSON: ‘A Strategic Approach to Advancing Health Equity for Priority Populations with or at Risk for Diabetes’  PI Prof. Tam Nguyen has been funded at $5.5 Million across 5-years for the integration of agile systems thinking and human-centered design methodology. In collaboration with the VPR’s Design & Innovation department, a proportion of the grant is earmarked to help apply human-centered design processes and thinking to implement the diabetes prevention program for Vietnamese Americans



3) DESIGN BUILD: 

• BC’s maker and prototyping spaces in 245 Beacon have been busy through summer offering a training boot camp, workshops for high schoolers and its facilities for the 2023 KEEN Initiative Conference. 32 student workers are now fully trained and ready to assist our student and faculty community fulfill their making and prototyping desires. 

InfoEd & Maximus Updates

We are making great progress in our implementation of both Info Ed and Maximus. On the Info Ed side, we are in the User Testing phase for the Proposal Development Module and will soon be piloting the module with a select few departments.  

The IRB and IACUC Module is in the final stages of development and will soon be looking for people who are willing to test out the new interface. Please email erin.sibley@bc.edu if you are willing to donate an hour or two of your time to this process. If you were frustrated with our old software system, now is your chance to provide feedback on the new system! This opportunity is open to faculty, staff, grad students, and postdocs. 

We have also started designing the pages and process for the Post Award Module. The first part of this is designing a new award set up process that will be far more efficient and automated than our current process. An internal team as started discussing web-based reporting with a focus on faculty needs and on-line drill down capabilities.

Meetings are also underway for the campus-wide COI/COC Module, which will provide the University with a unified process to collect and review Conflicts of Interest and Conflicts of Commitment reported by faculty and staff. Representatives from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculties and the Office of Internal Audit have started coordinating to identify requirements, develop new processes and improve efficiencies.

Office of Research Security, Integrity, and Compliance (RSIC) Updates

New RSIC Team Member

In June 2023, Margaret Regan joined the VPR’s RSIC team as the new Facility Security Officer (FSO) for Boston College. As the FSO, Margaret manages BC's Industrial Security Program and has compliance oversight of the University's classified research projects. Prior to joining BC, Margaret worked for General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), Defense Division, where she managed GDIT’s Industrial Security Program and ensured compliance with federal regulations and company policies. Margaret’s experience as a compliance professional and her expertise in Industrial Security will play a critical role in RSIC’s support of BC’s research faculty and staff.    

Reporting Research Misconduct

All members of the University community are responsible for reporting what they believe to be

research misconduct on the part of the faculty, research personnel (including and temporary or

adjunct members of the research staff), students, and other trainees. Any individual having

reason to believe that research misconduct has possibly occurred must report the matter to the

Vice Provost for Research, Dr. Thomas Chiles.

University policy defines research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in

proposing, performing, or reviewing research or in reporting research results:

● Fabrication means making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

● Falsification means manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or

changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented

in the research record.

● Plagiarism means the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or

words without giving appropriate credit.

International Shipment Screening

The Office of Research Security, Integrity, and Compliance (RSIC) would like to remind the BC community that all international shipments must be cleared by RSIC prior to sending. Upon receiving a completed International Shipping Form, RSIC will work with you to classify the item and ensure that the shipment complies with U.S. export and sanctions regulations. This process is designed to protect you and the University from an export violation that could result in administrative, civil, and/or criminal penalties.

Please provide sufficient lead time for the RSIC team to conduct a thorough review of your shipment. RSIC aims to provide a response within five business days. Please note that in rare cases shipments may require an export license from the U.S. government, which can take weeks or months to obtain.  

Office for Sponsored Programs (OSP) Updates

Post-award updates:

OSP is delighted to announce that our esteemed colleague, Mr. Bryce Kelley, has graciously accepted the position of Associate Director for Post-Award within our organization.

The selection process for this critical role was notably competitive. After a thorough series of interviews and careful deliberation, the search committee unanimously agreed that Bryce was the most suitable candidate to assume this important responsibility.

Bryce's profound understanding of our current organizational landscape, his experience, combined with his forward-thinking vision, left no doubt that he is the ideal choice to continue propelling our positive momentum forward.

Moving forward, the OSP post-award team will operate under Bryce's leadership. 

We are actively engaged in the process of filling Bryce's previous position as a Senior Assistant Director, with the goal of ensuring our post-award team is fully staffed once again.

Pre-award updates:

OSP is pleased to welcome three new members to the pre-award team, who will report to Robert Henry, Associate Director for Pre-award:

Megan Shelley, joined us on September 11th as an Assistant Director, Pre-award

Kevin Mears, joined us on September 25th as a Sr. Assistant Director, Pre-award

Katiana Diaz, will join us on October 9th as a Sr. Assistant Director, Pre-award

We will soon reflect these organizational changes in our official organizational chart, which can be accessed on our website at www.bc.edu/osp.

Direct link to OSP org chart:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dlDPR1Y1mX_rnoHtuuyZL5UTDrrXazAl/view

BC-Maximus ERS (Effort Reporting System) is live

The Summer 2023 is the current Reporting Period to be certified. The payroll data for months after August 2023 are viewable in ERS for your monitoring purposes. If you need assistance, please email ERS_Support@bc.edu

Office of Technology Transfer and Licensing (OTTL) Update



The Office of Technology Transfer and Licensing has received notice of allowance for US Application No. 17/090,982, entitled " Rapid Detection and Identification of Bacteria with Graphene Field Effect Transistors and Peptide Probes" to Kenneth Burch, Jianmin Gao, and Tim van Opijnen et al., Chemistry Department, Biology Department and Physics Department. This patent, together with another invention from the Burch Lab, has been licensed to a Minnesota-based start up, GRIP Molecular Technologies, Inc. Professor Ken Burch has also developed a successful and ongoing sponsored research relationship with the company.

Office of the Vice Provost for Research Update

Postdoctoral Affairs

Please note that the deadline for 2023-24 BC Postdoc Grants is October 16th. Postdocs can apply for a research or training grant through this link. Contact Erin Sibley with any questions.

RELEVANT NEWS STORIES

• Postdoctoral researchers warn NIH that cost-of-living pressures are gutting the workforce (Nature)

• Behind the fraud drama rocking academia (Financial Times)

• From microscopy to research administration: a conversation with Joshua Rappoport (BioTechniques)

RECENT FUNDING AWARDS