October 11, 2022

Oregon State University colleagues,

Welcome to the 2022-2023 academic year.

I am excited to start this new academic year celebrating last year’s successes and launching a number of new initiatives to support your success.

Our accomplishments last year continued to show that OSU’s research, innovation, scholarship, and creative activities make us world leaders. We stress the impact of our work and continue to collaborate across disciplines to tackle global issues and seek solutions that are innovative and holistic. We have expertise that is broad and deep. We have a longstanding culture of collaboration and a passion for work that transcends disciplinary boundaries.

As was announced in the university’s news release, our research funding last fiscal year at Oregon State University reached a record high of $471.5 million. This represents a 22% increase from the prior year and the fourth time in six years that OSU’s research awards have exceeded $400 million. The impact of our research, scholarship and creative activities cannot be measured solely with dollar amounts, but also through the contributions in a broad range of fields to not only answer the fundamental scientific questions, but also address critical issues such as environmental justice, equity, and community resilience and response, and more, making us uniquely successful in tackling global issues. Congratulations and thanks to each of you for continuing to make OSU shine as a comprehensive R1 research institution.

Over the past year, we worked with many of you to provide targeted support for collaborative and transdisciplinary proposal efforts, and, as a result, we have continued to be rewarded with major awards of tremendous impact. We are committed to continue supporting your efforts to pursue such opportunities with a focus on transdisciplinary, collaborative research and innovation that advance our impact on society, our students, and the economy. 

To further our support, we are developing a model to provide greater administrative support for complex awards. Through the newly formed Office for Research Advancement, we are organizing numerous campus conversations, learning series and ignite sessions around topics of global relevance. In addition, we are launching the Research Impact and Advancement Academy, with programming to help leap to large transdisciplinary team-based proposals. 

Last year, we saw the best year in the history of Oregon State University for startup business success, showcasing OSU faculty and student entrepreneurs’ mission to drive innovation toward commercialization and maximize OSU’s impact. 

To strengthen our support for innovation and entrepreneurship, we are working to secure funding to stabilize and enhance a range of long-term core efforts, programs, and resources across the university, and to increase faculty participation in innovation and entrepreneurship programming, student intern engagement, the number of startups launched through the OSU Advantage Accelerator, gap funding, as well as use-inspired research and activities.

Last year, we also started to modernize the Research Office’s software systems and processes to make compliance less burdensome. This year we will modernize Cayuse Sponsored Programs and implement new Cayuse modules for collecting conflict of interest disclosures and IRB submissions. Ultimately, these updates will provide a better user experience and integrate research integrity functions with proposal submissions, making it easier to conduct high-quality, high-impact research.

Finally, we started some major capital projects this year that, when finalized, will bolster our activities even further. These projects provide a unique opportunity to think about research and scholarship broadly in the context of collaborative transdisciplinary research and innovation, looking for holistic solutions at the intersections of disciplines to increase our impact and our students’ success. Namely:

  • The Collaborative Innovation Complex (CIC) will create state-of-the-art signature facilities to elevate research and innovation impact in addressing global challenges.
  • The Arts and Education Complex (AEC) will provide a unique platform for arts-based engagement with research across the university, exploring the relationships between art, humanities, science, and technology.
  • The Innovation District (ID) on the OSU-Cascades campus in Bend will establish a 24-acre zone dedicated to university/industry partnerships as part of our distributed innovation ecosystem.
  • The new Innovation Lab (iLab) at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, located in the new Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building will allow researchers and students to access state-of-the-art fabrication and machining tools, as well as support personnel to train and participate in project design and development.

Congratulations again on your remarkable achievements. We stand ready to enable and serve the OSU research community and look forward to the creative and innovative research and scholarship you continue to produce. I wish you a productive and rewarding new academic year.

Sincerely,

Irem Y. Tumer, Ph.D., ASME Fellow
Vice President for Research