Update on University Research Awards: Eligibility changed for Junior Researcher Award

The eligibility guidelines for the University Junior Researcher Award have been changed to eliminate an unintended problem, which, for some reason, no one had pointed out in the 10 years since the award was created.

The award is now open to all tenure-track faculty members who are in at least their third year of service at North Carolina A&T.  Previously, eligibility was limited to tenure-track faculty members who had completed their terminal degrees within the past five years.  That created a group of faculty members (untenured but more than five years out from receiving their terminal degrees) who were not eligible for either the senior or junior researcher awards.  It was not intended that any group of faculty members with more than one year of service be excluded from the awards program, so we’re changed the rule.

Here are the revised rules in PDF form.

With this change, all tenured and tenure-track faculty members with at least one year of service at A&T are eligible for one (and only one) of the three awards:

Outstanding University Senior Researcher Award: Tenured faculty members.

Outstanding University Junior Researcher Award: Tenure-track faculty members with at least three years of service at A&T.

Rookie of the Year: Tenure-track faculty members in their second year of service at A&T.

Any questions can be posted here as comments or directed to Dr. Mitzi Bond, mbond@ncat.edu; Ms. Saundra Evans, syevans@ncat.edu; or Mr. David Arneke, drarneke@ncat.edu.

Follow-up: Duke researcher Anil Potti resigns

Three weeks ago, we provided a link to news coverage of the troubles of Dr. Anil Potti of Duke University.  The News & Observer and other newspapers reported Saturday that Potti has faced the apparently inevitable and resigned from the university (Click here for the brief News & Observer report on Potti’s resignation). That doesn’t quite signal the end of the Potti’s troubles; his research is still being reviewed.

 

CERT’s international conference on green technology gets under way at the Proximity

Energy researchers from around the world fill up the lobby of the Proximity Hotel as registration for the international conference begins.

Dr. Julieanne Malveaux, president of Bennett College, delivers a keynote address at the conference luncheon.

Attendees head for breakout sessions on green energy and green construction.

Two high-powered keynote speakers kicked things off as the First International Conference on Green and Sustainable Technology began today.  Steven Burke, president of the Biofuels Center of North Carolina, and Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College, were followed by breakout sessions on green energy and green construction.  A crowd of 150-plus is filling up the Proximity Hotel for the two days of the conference, organized by A&T’s Center for Energy Research & Technology.

 

Run-up begins for CERT’s conference on green and sustainable technology

Dr. Andres Llombart of the Spanish energy research center CIRCE speaks to North Carolina A&T energy researchers and administrators today. Dr. Llombart will be a keynote speaker at this week’s First International Conference on Green & Sustainable Technology, organized by A&T’s Center for Energy Research & Technology.  The conference will be held Thursday and Friday at the famously green and sustainable Proximity Hotel.

UPDATE: 2011 Research Excellence Awards process begins

Each academic unit has received the rules and process summary for this year’s Research Excellence Awards.  An updated and expanded PDF of the document is attached below.  It now contains full details on the the submission procedure, an application checklist, coversheets for hte college/school awards and tghe unisity awards, and a full timetable for the process.

The deadline for applications for college/school awards is Tuesday January 18.  The deadline for colleges and schools to submit their nominees for the university awards is Tuesday February 1.

Each college and school has the opportunity to select a nominee for the Outstanding Senior Researcher Award, Outstanding Junior Researcher Award, and Rookie of the Year award.  The college and school nominees will be reviewed by a committee appointed by the Chancellor for selection of the winners.

The awards will be presented March 15 at the Honors Day Convocation.  Winners will be invited to give presentations on Faculty Research Day, Thursday April 14, and will be honored at the annual Research Awards Dinner on April 15.  So get your taxes done early if you plan to be a winner.

RESEARCH AWARDS 2011 — Updated and expanded announcement

Duke cancer scientist asks to retract journal article, sparking negative news coverage

An academic integrity/research misconduct case at Duke is generating some very negative coverage for the university.  A professor with Duke’s s Department of Medicine and Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy has requested that a journal article be retracted after his co-author re-assessed the data and determined that they didn’t support the article’s findings (others previously raised questions about the research).  The researcher, Dr. Anil Potti, had already been suspended over questions surfaced about his resume. Click here for the article in  The News & Observer of Raleigh on Saturday.  An N&O columnist decided to pile on with a critical piece in this morning’s edition, showing how quickly a such a situation can go from bad to worse.  And it doesn’t look like the issue will go away.  As bad as it is for Duke’s reputation, the case is bad news for all researchers and research institutions, considering the increasingly hostile views toward science being promoted by many politicians (which, admittedly, are also held by many members of the public).