UND Discovery - The University of North Dakota's Research Magazine

By Peter Johnson
North Dakota EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) has played a key role in helping UND achieve a record level of sponsored research support, notes Gary Johnson, project co-director. Look at the picture above. Dr. Gary Johnson, University of North Dakota assistant vice president for research, is happy, and he should be.

Johnson is co-project director of the North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), which has played a key role in helping the University of North Dakota reach a record level of $94.3 million in sponsored program awards in FY06.

His program can’t take all of the credit for the fact UND faculty and staff submitted a record 974 proposals to external agencies in FY06 with a value of $255 million. Or that UND’s sponsored program base has doubled over the last five years, and has seen a 240 percent increase since FY99. Or that, overall, UND’s research portfolio, including ongoing and committed accounts, is $315 million as of June 30, 2006.

But North Dakota EPSCoR can take some of the credit.
For example, since 2003 EPSCoR has funded 37 new faculty through start-up grants; 36 are still on the faculty. The start-up grant program is crucial to recruiting many new faculty, who need the funds to jump-start their labs in their new location.

“We have the ability to attract and recruit high-level researchers,” said Johnson.

The same goes for students. Through the competitive Advanced Undergraduate Research Award (AURA), EPSCoR encourages undergraduate students to consider a career in science, engineering, or mathematics research. AURA provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to participate in faculty-mentored research projects.
Also aimed at students is Nurturing American Tribal Undergraduate Research and Education (NATURE), an outreach project aimed at improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education among North Dakota tribal college and tribal high school students.

“The overall goal of ND EPSCoR is to increase the competitiveness of North Dakota for merit-based grants and contracts in support of science and technology research from federal funding agencies,” said Johnson.

Funded through federal-state partnerships intended to give states like North Dakota an opportunity to secure federal research dollars, North Dakota EPSCoR manages a comprehensive research development plan that involves infrastructure improvement programs, science outreach and recruitment programs, and technology transfer and commercialization programs.

North Dakota EPSCoR’s federal research partners include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). North Dakota EPSCoR also coordinates the state’s EPSCoR activities with the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture.

The SUNRISE initiative

A big part of UND’s energy research efforts is the Sustainable Energy Research, Infrastructure, and Supporting Education (SUNRISE) initiative, which focuses on (1) transportation fuels from renewable resources; (2) improving the efficiency and decreasing the environmental impact of coal utilization; and (3) developing novel technologies for future wind and hydrogen economies.

Founded in 2005, SUNRISE includes faculty and students at UND and North Dakota State University. Research funding is anchored by two large EPSCoR Infrastructure Improvement Grants, one from the National Science Foundation and the other from the U.S. Department of Energy. SUNRISE has projects with over $5 million in funding.

“We find that being able to focus very specialized scientists, along with a spectrum of researchers, leading all the way to the engineers who will design the commercial production processes, allows you to answer research questions in a more organized way,” said Dr. Wayne Seames, an associate professor of chemical engineering with an extensive industry background. “It leads to real-world results more efficiently and gives students more insight into the fact that particular disciplines don’t have all the answers. Getting these different points of view enriches the educational process for students.”

Current SUNRISE researchers include Mark Hoffmann, Irina Smoliakova, Evguenii Kozliak, David Pierce and Alena Kubatova, all of the UND Department of Chemistry; Michael Mann, Wayne Seames, Frank Bowman, Darrin Muggli, Edward Kolodka, and Brian Tande, all of UND’s Department of Chemical Engineering; Hossein Salehfar of UND’s Electrical Engineering Department; Jeffrey Stamp of UND’s Entrepreneurship Program; and three researchers at North Dakota State University: John Hershberger and Ewe Burghaus of Chemistry, and Burton Johnson of Plant Sciences.

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