Management of a complex research strategy involving multiple teams, multiple team members, and varying objectives and goals is difficult at best. Section 3.6 summarizes some of the many challenges as well as rewards of research management in such an environment. The complexity of a multidisciplinary undertaking such as an ERC makes a research management plan all the more important. While the strategic plan sets out a unifying vision of what is to be accomplished and establishes overall center research goals and objectives, ultimate success for the entire undertaking requires the establishment and integration of project goals and objectives, including the proper prioritization of time, effort, and resources to be applied to each. This level of research management requires that each project or groups of projects include firm estimates of the resources required to address the project (including people, money, and equipment) in the time given to complete the project.

It is important to realize that research management is not a smooth process. It involves continuous experimentation, especially in the first 5-6 years. The optimum management approach is different for every center, and also will change over time.

3.3.1 ERC Research Management Team

The research management team at an ERC may consist of a varying number of individuals in different functions, depending on the center. At a minimum, the Center Director holds ultimate responsibility for the planning and direction of the overall research program, with a faculty member designated as the leader of each Thrust Area (there are usually three to six such areas); sometimes two individuals share the responsibility for day-to-day Thrust Area management as Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs). In some ERCs there is a single Associate Director for Research who is the focal point for all Thrust Area management issues and who reports to the Director.

Every ERC also has an executive group, often called the Research Review Committee, that meets periodically to review and assess progress in the center's research areas, select projects, allocate and adjust research funding, and make adjustments to the center's strategic plan as necessary. This committee typically consists of the Center Director, possibly the Deputy Director, the Associate Director for Research (if applicable), Thrust Area leaders, and one or more representatives from the center's industrial members -- or some combination thereof. Thus, another function of the research review committee is to provide direct industrial input into the planning and direction of the research program. In some cases, the committee membership also includes one or more faculty members and even a graduate student.

An example of an ERC research management team is the Directors' Committee at the DSSC. This committee meets every week. Planning is continuous, through the committee, with major inputs from industry twice a year. Project selection is done "more or less in consensus style" by this committee, with the Center Director making the final decisions.

Research management apparently has only subtle effects on the life of the ERC Director. Surprisingly, out of 15 ERCs responding to a survey conducted by the authors of this chapter, all but two Directors reported that they still maintain an active teaching load, with only about a third receiving reduced teaching loads. Also, save for the same two persons, all ERC Directors maintain personal research programs that are supported by grants independent of the ERC -- although in about half of these latter cases the Directors indicated that their research activities did decline due to the demands of ERC management.

In establishing the resources required to complete the research, the relative priorities among intersecting projects must be established, assuring that those projects that must be completed or substantially completed before other work can progress are recognized in advance. The research team must set priorities among and between projects that compete for resources and must set deadlines for deliverables from each project. These actions most often require the creation of a research review committee or some other organizational management entity charged with overseeing the research plan (see Section 3.3.3). Some thought will be required as to how deliverables from each project or set of projects will be communicated to other teams and team leaders as well as to industrial advisory boards.

Defining timetables and milestones for basic research can be both subjective and contentious. Being too specific tends to restrict the center's creativity in pursuing its goals. To get around this difficulty, it is a good idea to develop broad objectives for basic research and review the objectives periodically throughout the year.

It is necessary to establish a finite duration of projects -- not much longer than 1-2 years in most cases. Project support through the ERC should never be considered permanent -- even for the core faculty. As one Director puts it, "There is no tenure at an ERC." It is the responsibility of the Thrust Area Leaders to hold project leaders accountable for achieving milestones on schedule. Similarly, it is the responsibility of the Center Director and Associate Director for Research, along with the research review committee, to hold the Thrust Area Leaders accountable for programs in their areas.

Management of the research program should take into consideration the objectives of other program elements of the ERC, such as education (see Section 3.4). Processes should be established and exercised to ensure frequent faculty/student interaction across the disciplines or research teams. One of the most important elements of the ERC program is the creation of interdisciplinary activities to address difficult engineering problems. Often this feature of an ERC is under-appreciated because of the demands of specific fields, areas of investigation, or projects. Within projects and fields there is considerable interdisciplinary activity, which is often taken for granted (if it is working well) but which should be identified regularly, drawing attention to what worked well, what didn't, and why. One way to do this is to develop internal workshops and symposia for center personnel to share and discuss their interdisciplinary efforts. Involving the students in this activity is one of the most important contributions an ERC can make to the field of engineering, as it helps in creating a competent, cross-disciplinary work force capable of working on difficult problems in industry and academe across disciplinary boundaries. Similarly, involvement of experienced students in research management team meetings strengthens the ERC and helps prepare students better for the future.

Research managers must establish and exercise processes to revisit and revise the research strategic plan regularly, incorporating progress in research efforts as goals are achieved. The plan is only as good as the benchmarks it sets, so in order to be a useful tool, it must be modified as progress is made or as the overall center strategy changes. The plan helps keep the entire effort on track and communicates the progress and timeline to all members of the team. It is useful to establish a method for frequent exchange of information -- on a Web site for example -- where basic assumptions about the plan can be seen by everyone. A time should be set for a regular brief review of the plan by the entire team. The outcome of this review might include new time schedules, integration of activities, or new goals and objectives discovered as a result of ongoing work.

Research managers also must establish and exercise processes to determine which projects to terminate and which to add. Within the competing demands of a strategic plan, it is important to regularly review the steps being taken to achieve the center's goals and their relative priority. To preserve valuable resources and enhance the productivity of the center, it may be necessary to terminate projects that once seemed important in isolation or in relation to other facets of the effort, but that upon reflection appear to be unrealistic or non-viable. Projects may also be terminated if they have not progressed as planned or expected. In general, projects that do not involve more than one center faculty member and that do not relate directly to other projects or communicate with other Thrust Areas should not continue to receive ERC support. (Occasional exceptions will occur with projects that are providing crucial support to the ERC's efforts.) On the other hand, in the regular review of the strategic direction of the center and its goals, it is equally important to launch new efforts as soon as they are discovered to be potentially vital to the achievement of the goals and objectives of other projects or the overall goals of the center. The main criterion for selection or deselection should be "Is the project on the ERC's critical path?" That is, does the project contribute directly toward the achievement of one or more of the milestones? (For further discussion, see Section 3.3.4, "Management of Research Funds.")

In the early stages of implementation of the plan, there is a natural coalescence of individual PI-driven projects into fewer, more substantive and collective efforts within each Thrust. More senior ERCs relate that, from Years 1-6, the Thrust Areas become "horizontally" integrated, with projects within a Thrust Area being carried out by multidisciplinary teams and all project teams within the Thrust Area communicating regularly to cross-fertilize the various projects.

However, ERCs that evolve only to the stage of horizontal integration of projects within a Thrust Area are only partially successful. An indication that a "systems approach" has been achieved is when the center research projects become integrated, not only within themselves but also between Thrust Areas to address the system-level goals of the ERC. Generally during Years 3-6, linkages appear between the various thrusts. Projects and procedural mechanisms can be created that explicitly blur Thrust Area boundaries and permit the merging of thrusts.

In developing and using a research plan, managers should use charts and graphs or other visual means and a database to track progress and document plans for future directions. A simple spreadsheet can be used to display the current state of all elements of the research program. In each of the activities above, illustration by means of flow charts, graphs, and databases may enhance the message. Illustrations also serve as a reminder of significant milestones, both positive and those that have been discarded. They will serve to link all of the members of the team together -- including faculty, staff, students, and affiliated sites and individuals -- giving each a stake in the efforts of the center.

3.3.3.1 Seeding New Opportunities

One center uses the following method for seeding new research opportunities:

CASE STUDY:
Projects are funded in principle for three years at a time, corresponding to the three major phases of the ERC life-cycle. The first year is funded at 100% of the amount deemed necessary to carry out the research. The second year is funded at a 90% level. This encourages faculty to find outside funding, which promotes collaboration with industry and government researchers while freeing up resources to seed new opportunities. The third year is funded at 75%-80% of the original level. By now, testbeds have been established and new technical barriers and research directions identified that can be supported with funds freed up by this diminishing formula.

The new projects are selected through a discussion between the center Executive Committee (or research review committee) and center faculty. Jointly they discuss areas where the center needs more focus. These areas often are pointed out by a center's industrial advisory board or NSF site visits teams, or they are suggested by results of center research or findings of colleagues working in the field.

After new project areas have been discussed, the research committee asks for short descriptions of potential new project starts. The projects will have a set maximum duration -- say, up to three years. The evaluation criteria for project selection include:

• Relevance to the prioritization of center needs
  
• Quality of the proposed effort
  
• Whether the work is likely to be world-class
  
• Relationship to work outside the center
  
• Synergy with ongoing center research
• Interest by industry.

After evaluation, projects are seeded for a period of one year and reviewed at six months and one year. If the project results appear to merit continued funding, then the project is continued for the full three years.

3.3.3.2 Issues Regarding Phased-out Projects

When projects are to be discontinued, a phasing-out mechanism is required to ensure that students are not adversely affected by the evolving strategic plan. In the case of the mechanism described in the above case study, some of the funds generated by the 10% per year cut in the operating budget are used to support the students on discontinued projects for a period of nine months to a year. This allows senior graduate students to finish their dissertation and new students and faculty members to find additional support.

One consequence of merging research thrusts that is sometimes unavoidable is the need to cut faculty from the ERC. For example, when Maryland's ISR decided to reduce its Thrust Areas from 5 to 3, this restructuring also entailed reducing the faculty from about 40 to about 35. The affected faculty members naturally were troubled by this decision, which, as a result, took about a year to implement.

Funds received from NSF for an ERC are meant to create an academic infrastructure that will enable the center to produce world-class research, facilitate industrial/academic research cooperation, create a new level of technology, and devise innovations in engineering education. Each ERC must, together with its School of Engineering and university administration, put in place the mechanisms needed to orchestrate resources to meet these goals. Resources must be diverted not only toward the research infrastructure but also toward education and technology transfer. Relevant budgeting and accounting practices are discussed in detail in Chapter 6, "Administrative Management."

3.3.4.1 Financial Oversight

In many ERCs, financial management and oversight of funds allocated to the research program may be within the province of the center management or administrative staff. Some ERCs involve ERC faculty in financial oversight or planning committees that are responsible for making short- and long-term spending decisions, while the ERC financial manager tracks finances, grants and contracts, and daily expenditures.

Over the years since the ERC Program was founded in 1985, two ERCs have lost control of their financial resources at a certain point. In both cases, a major factor was the type of university accounting system that was in place. Regardless of support received from the host institution's Grants & Contracts or Sponsored Programs Office, it is a good idea for an ERC to establish its own independent electronic accounting system. If possible, the accounts administrator should provide a numerical account code system that provides each Thrust Area and research activity with its own operating budget.

3.3.4.2 Use of Internal ERC Funds

How an ERC initially negotiates resource returns to the center varies across institutions. A number of ERCs receive no indirect cost (IDC) recovery from their host institution, while other ERCs recover a considerable amount of the indirect costs they generate, to use at their discretion. Some ERCs explicitly restrict the amount of money a PI may receive in salary for participating in the ERC. Most ERCs pay no salary to faculty members who are simply team members of a project, while some will support no more than one month's summer salary. Thrust Leaders at most ERCs receive no more than two months' salary support for their efforts. There are exceptions; for example, one ERC chooses to pay several participating faculty significant portions of their academic salary (3 months or more) for about 15 faculty. Such decisions, often not made solely by ERC management, have a direct impact on resources available for ERC activities. It is critical for ERC management to negotiate up front (i.e., at proposal submission time) what the arrangement will be for IDC recovery, matching, etc.

Given some rough idea of the income available to the research program, decisions must be made as to how to dispense these resources among the many Thrust Areas and industrial activities. Some ERCs decide to fund individual projects for 1-2 year periods and then to collect, administratively, common projects under a Thrust Area umbrella. Other ERCs choose to fund the research budget requests of a Thrust Area, with the dispensation of funds within the Thrust being left to the discretion of the Thrust Area leader and the PIs in that Thrust. Continued funding of any project should be reviewed every year, so that no Thrust Area thinks of itself as an "entitlement program." Each ERC has its own policy regarding the cessation of ERC support and the termination of a project. PIs should be given enough notice of the termination of ERC funds to allow them to secure other sources of support. In this regard, if all projects (and possibly even Thrust Areas) are made aware that support is of finite duration and based upon clearly stated performance criteria, then the need to seek external support should be a constant goal, not an unexpected surprise.

Certain ERCs hold aside small sources of money to "seed" new projects or to leverage research support from industry. This requires setting aside funds for such programs, which indirectly removes resources from the mainstream research program.

Almost unanimously, ERCs surveyed reported that providing seed money to projects outside the ERC made PIs and their department chairs happy but the practice tended to be abused and the resources wasted. There is a risk that the ERC comes to be viewed as a "mini-NSF." Such negative experiences could have stemmed from the ERC not clearly stating the expectations in return for support. One variation on this theme that may be more productive is to request participation from PIs outside the ERC on new ERC project teams on an ad hoc basis, rather than simply providing them with seed money. However, there is a potential for two classes of ERC faculty -- core and external -- to become established. To avoid this situation, all PIs funded by the ERC should be expected to participate in meetings, write ERC reports, and otherwise function as ERC faculty members.

Each ERC should plan how it intends to involve industry financially in the task of taking ERC discoveries and transferring them to new technologies. Industrial membership in an ERC can cost a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars in fees. A proprietary research project may require industry support well in excess of the ERC membership fee. In order to secure such funding, some ERCs leverage industrial support by committing graduate students and faculty to such projects. Other ERCs also provide travel funds for faculty to visit industry for the express purpose of promoting joint projects.

In summary, ERCs must plan at an early stage those "uninteresting" but critically necessary mechanisms for distributing research support, evaluating research success, and promoting the continual efforts by all to secure external research support.

3.3.4.3 Encouraging the Search for External Support

Because actual direct support of ERC faculty salary is relatively small, most ERCs encourage center faculty to seek outside support. As one research manager noted, "Faculty members are not doing their job unless they either get outside support or bring in Center membership money to support their work." ERCs employ a variety of different means to accomplish this. Listed below are some responses excerpted from the questionnaire.

"We have an industrial interactions incentive program which provides funds for travel to industry, to support student research visits to industry, and to provide critical research resources specific to collaborative research with industry."

"The Center informs the faculty team members of outside opportunities and, when feasible, helps in arranging/providing required matched support."

"In some instances, it is required that industrial commitment to certain projects has been made before ERC funds are committed. In this case, the ERC will help Co-PIs to identify potential industrial sponsors that might support such activities. Furthermore, when preparing proposals for outside contracts, the ERC will make a commitment to the Co-PI for additional funding, should industrial funds be secured. This dual leverage factor has also proved to be very useful."

As described in Section 3.2.5.2, "Industrial Buy-in," ERC research programs are designed and managed with the continual involvement of industry. All ERCs have involved their industrial member companies directly in the establishment and refinement of their strategic plan. Certain ERCs align industrial representatives with specific projects within a Thrust Area in a way that provides both ERC students and faculty with a continuous industrial perspective on the fundamental research. Many ERCs develop joint projects, in which personnel from a firm or a consortium of firms work alongside the ERC students and faculty on the project. This involvement creates a climate, within the ERC, in which industry not only participates on specific projects they subsidize but also has direct input into the evaluation of the fundamental Thrust Area research.

Mechanisms to involve industry should not be confined to just the research program; to be truly successful, ERCs must also strive to draw industry into the center's education program. One successful method is the alignment of each ERC graduate student with an industrial "mentor" who periodically reviews the student's progress, perhaps during the annual industrial meetings, and periodically discusses the project with the student, either by telephone or by electronic mail. Formal programs can provide for graduate student internships in industrial labs during a summer hiatus. In one variation of this program, industry will recognize a student-developed technique or analytical method it wants to import into its standard operating repertoire. The most effective way to transfer technology is to have that student spend a few months in the company's facilities, working with industrial personnel. Hiring ERC graduates is probably the single best way for a company to absorb the broader range of knowledge inherent in an ERC; and it tends to bind the company even closer to the center. In several cases, a former ERC student has become the company's representative to the center.

In the early years of an ERC's existence, cultivating industrial commitment to the strategic planning process and the ERC philosophy is paramount. In later years, an ERC must strive to transfer tangible ERC discoveries to industry. Some of the many different mechanisms that ERCs use to transfer technology to their industrial partners were described in Section 3.2.5.2. They include person-to-person exchanges, such as through internships of selected ERC students with industry and industrial employee internships at ERC facilities, and ERC/industry collaborative testbed research projects at either the ERC or at the corporate location. Other involvement mechanisms include: (1) fostering academic interaction with industry by providing interested faculty with travel money to visit prospective industry for research support and (2) requiring all ERC-supported research projects to seek industrial support after a certain time period or lose ERC funding.

In many ERCs, industry participates throughout the technology development process; it is a process of "mutual development." The ERC takes the process as far as is necessary to effect a successful handoff to industry. As one Center Director says, "It's a question of how far we have to carry it before they become believers."
 

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