April 2015 Newsletter

NSF CAREER Workshop to be Held April 6

The Office of Proposal Development will be conducting an NSF CAREER Workshop the afternoon of Monday, April 6, 2015. The half day workshop will be held at the FSU Materials Research Building, 2005 Levy Avenue (FSU Southwest Campus), Seminar Room, Room 114 from 1:00 p.m. until 4:25 p.m. For more information, and to register, please visit the workshop website at: http://research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/workshopstraining/nsf-career-proposal-writing-workshop-2015/

Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program

The faculty portal is now open for FSU's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP). UROP is a year-long program in which high-achieving first- and second-year students, as well as some transfer and veteran students, serve as research assistants with faculty members working on research or creative projects. The faculty interview and select admitted UROP students for their projects and direct their work during the year. All UROP students attend a year-long research colloquium and present their work at the annual FSU Undergraduate Research Symposium.

As UROP research sponsors, faculty members, postdocs, and graduate students can have student research assistants at no cost to them. Faculty can also receive a materials grant for up to $500 and be eligible for a $2,000 Undergraduate Research Mentor award. We encourage you to upload a project for which you would like research assistants (and view previous UROP projects) through the UROP site. For more information on UROP, contact Dr. Joe O'Shea at joshea@fsu.edu.

Research photos, videos, story opportunities needed

Do you take pictures of your research? Capture videos of experiments, creative endeavors, etc.? Do you blog? Do you have a paper ready to be published or a new grant you just received? If any of these even remotely apply, we want to hear from you!

Whether it’s @FSUResearch, the FSU research blog, the FSU news website, or news releases in general, we have a variety of ways to promote your research. But we need your help in getting the content so we can communicate it to the masses.

Please contact Tom Butler (tbutler@fsu.edu) and Kathleen Haughney (khaughney@fsu.edu) with any photos, videos or news opportunities you would like to send along.

Conflicts of Interest Update

Florida statutes provide that a university employee may not have a contractual, employment, or financial relationship with a company that does business with the university. However, an exemption is provided that allows an employee to have such a relationship when the company licenses the employee’s technology from the university or when an employee is an investigator on a research agreement between the university and the company. Such exemptions are allowed only with prior institutional review and approval. The exemption procedure is accomplished through the Office of Research Compliance Programs (ORCP) and the appropriate college/department.

To fully evaluate the potential conflicts of interest an employee’s proposed relationship with the business entity may create and to determine whether to allow it, it is necessary to understand the proposed activities and financial interests, the employee’s university activities, the relationship between the university and the business entity, and any other outside activities the employee may have. This information is disclosed using a Request for Exemption from Conflict of Interest Laws form, which is designed to assist those who must evaluate the Request for Exemption. If an exemption is approved, the conflict will be managed through the use of a Monitoring Plan.

The ORCP has recently updated the following forms:

Request for Exemption from Conflict of Interest Laws

Monitoring Plan for Potential Conflicts of Interest

Monitoring Plan Review Checklist (annual reporting form)

These forms, along with additional information about conflict of interest policies, procedures, rules, and regulations, are located on ORCP’s Conflict of Interest website.

Questions and comments may be addressed to Diana Key at 644-8648 or dkey@fsu.edu.

NSF and DoD announce new open access policies for funded researchers

Two federal agencies, the Defense Department (DoD) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), announced plans for creating open access policies that will require grantees to post peer-reviewed articles freely on the internet within 12 months of publication.

Legislation has also been reintroduced in both chambers of Congress designed to move up public access timelines from 12 to six months from publication date. The “Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act” is intended to speed public access, encourage collaborative research and lead to faster commercialization of research results, according to sponsors.

DoD announced its intention to work through the federal rule making process to create its open access policy: see http://www.sparc.arl.org/blog/dod-releases-draft-public-access-plan. The Pentagon intends to require all DoD-funded researchers to deposit final peer-reviewed manuscripts into the Department’s “Defense Technical Information Center” (DTIC) repository with no longer than a 12-month embargo period. While articles are under embargo, the Department intends to provide a link from the DTIC repository to the article on the publishers website. After the embargo period expires, DoD will provide direct access to the article’s full text on the DTIC repository, as well as maintain a link to the publishers website. This process closely resembles the process currently in place at the NIH’s PubMed Central database for open access.

The NSF announced its open access plan, an intention to require grantees to make peer-reviewed papers available to the public for free within 12 months of journal publication. The plan will appear in the Federal Register in April and be open for comment. The upcoming SUS-NSF Grants Conference in Tampa will be a good opportunity for providing feedback to NSF staff as well: see http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134478.

Both developments respond to policy directives from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2013 to have science agencies follow a process similar to that in place at NIH since 2008 to increase access to federally funded research. It appears that NSF will work with the Department of Energy’s PAGES (Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science) to incorporate either the NSF-funded papers in the repository or a link to the publisher’s site for an article. The system will be voluntary in 2015 and become mandatory in January 2016 according to the NSF plan.

NASA is working with the NIH PubMed Central for its open access and the Agriculture Department is building its own PubAg archive system for open access.

University Libraries ready to assist with new federal open access policies

Over the past few months major funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Department of Defense, as well as others, have announced new public access policies for funded research. What this means is that many faculty and grad students at FSU will soon be required to make journal articles and data sets derived from funding openly accessible as a condition of continued or future funding. This is a major shift in the default research culture, and University Libraries are working to provide information, resources, and support as the campus adjusts to these requirements.

One key change is the requirement, by almost every agency, for a well-developed data management plan along with new proposals. University Libraries' Data Services team is available for consultations and assistance in preparing data management plans that meet the requirements of funders. Additionally, FSU researchers can utilize DMPTool, which provides templates for data management plans by agency.

Public access mandates, including data management plans, shared open data and open access to research articles, will expand the worldwide visibility of the important research conducted at FSU, increase the impact of that research, and aid in examining related work at other institutions with whom we compete for grants and contracts.

University Libraries are closely monitoring these policy developments and collaborating with other campus units such as the Office of Research Compliance Programs to assist researchers in meeting these funder requirements. Researchers with questions about public access to funded research or data management planning should contact Micah Vandegrift (Digital Scholarship Coordinator, mvandegrift@fsu.edu) and Renaine Julian (Data Research Librarian, rjulian@fsu.edu) or find more info on the libraries website.

NSF announces solicitation to set up four regional Big Data Innovation Hubs

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced a new award solicitation to set up a network of four “Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs” each funded up to a maximum of $1.25 million over three years. The deadline for applications is June 24. To read the announcement, click here.

In March 2012, the administration announced the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative, which aims to solve some of the nation’s most pressing R&D challenges related to extracting knowledge and insights from large, complex collections of digital data. As part of this initiative, the administration encouraged multiple stakeholders including federal agencies, private industry, academia, state and local governments, non-profits, and foundations, to develop and participate in big data research and innovation projects across the country.

To augment ongoing activities and to ignite new big data public-private partnerships across the nation, NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering is now seeking to establish a National Network of Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs (BD Hubs). Each hub would be a consortium of members from academia, industry, and/or government. This solicitation aims to establish four hubs across distinct geographic regions of the United States, including the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West.

Regional meeting set for April 13 in Durham
Each BD Hub would focus on key big data challenges and opportunities for its region of service. To foster collaboration among prospective partners within a region, NSF is sponsoring a series of regional, intensive, one-day workshops (called charrettes) . One charrette will be held in each geographic region to convene stakeholders, explore big data challenges, and aid in the establishment of that consortium. The charrette for the South Region is set for April 13 in Durham, N.C.

This NSF solicitation is the first of a multi-phase process meant to develop a national network of BD hubs. The first phase will set up the governance structure of each hub’s consortium of members as well as develop approaches to ensure cross-hub collaboration and sustainability over the long term. The next phase will focus on building out various sectors of particular interest to each BD Hub (e.g., transportation, smart cities, health, energy, public safety, and education) so as to advance sector innovation in that region. The final phases will focus on connecting the BD Hubs and their regional sectors into a national big data innovation ecosystem.

This solicitation is part of NSF's big data program, which includes: research and infrastructure development; education and workforce development; and multi-disciplinary collaborative teams and communities that address complex science and engineering grand challenges.

NSF cybersecurity webinar planned on "Anonymous" hacking group

For those interested in cybersecurity, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is sponsoring a webinar April 14 from 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. as part of its Watch Series exploring the group of hackers known as Anonymous.

Anonymous, a group of hackers, activists and technologists, came to the fore in 2008 when they attacked the church of Scientology. Since then their coordinated collective action has come up against global corporations and supported the Arab revolutionaries, but how much do we know about who they are and what motivates them?

Six years ago Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist, set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption.

Coleman will share her story of becoming an Anonymous confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece. She will be talking about the motivations of the group, the meaning of digital activism and the many facets of culture in the Internet age.

Bio: Gabriella (Biella) Coleman holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, she researches, writes, and teaches on computer hackers and digital activism. Her first book on Free Software, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking has been published with Princeton University Press.

Her new book, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, published by Verso, has been named to Kirkus Reviews’Best Books of 2014.

To Join the Webinar:

The Webinar will be held from 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. EDT on April 14, 2015 in Room 110.

To attend virtually, please register at: http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/nsf/150414/

Contacts
Jeremy Epstein, (703) 292-8950, jepstein@nsf.gov

Hazardous Materials Shipping Training

FSU Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) will be offering DOT/IATA Hazardous Materials Shipping Training on April 15, 2015 from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m. in room 1200 Carothers Hall. This training is for university employees who offer any hazardous materials or dangerous goods for shipment in commerce. To determine applicability to you and your staff see below.

To register, access the training calendar at: http://pub.extranet.fsu.edu/sites/safety/forms/Lists/Safety%20Training/AllItems.aspx

Course Description
Hazardous Material Shipping training includes the following topics:

General awareness/familiarization
Function-specific topics for shippers, including: Applicability of Regulations, Limitations, Classification, Identification, Packing, Packaging Specifications and Performance Tests, Marking and Labeling, Documentation, Handling, Radioactive Material and Biological/Infectious Substances
DOT Security Plan

Who Must Attend
All university employees who offer any hazardous materials or dangerous goods for shipment in commerce.

Refresher training is required every three years.

Supervisory Responsibilities
Supervisors are responsible for ensuring that every shipment of dangerous goods or hazardous materials originating from FSU facilities or resulting from FSU sponsored activities is performed in full compliance with applicable regulations. Trained EH&S personnel are always available to certify shipments originating from main campus and can assist with shipments from remote sites. EH&S must be contacted as far in advance as is possible to ensure all necessary support materials and approvals can be obtained.

Definitions
Hazardous Material: Any substance or material that the Secretary of Transportation has determined is capable of posing an unreasonable risk to health, safety and property when transported in commerce and has been designated as hazardous under the Federal Hazardous Materials Transportation Law (49 U.S.C. 5103). The includes hazardous substances, hazardous wastes, marine pollutants, elevated temperature materials, materials designated as hazardous in the Hazardous Materials Table (see 49 CFR 172.101).

Dangerous Goods: Articles or substances which are capable of posing a risk to health, safety, property or the environment and which are shown in the list of dangerous goods or otherwise classified per ICAO technical instructions.

Offering in Commerce: Providing hazardous materials or dangerous goods for transportation for commercial purposes or utilizing contract personnel or commercial carriers.

If you need additional guidance concerning applicability, contact Laymon Gray at lgray@admin.fsu.edu or 850-645-2279.

Date	Course Code and Name	Location/Time
4/16/2015	SRA18 Intellectual Property / Export Control	Student Services Building, Rm 301, 8:30-10:30
4/17/2015	SRA17 Facilities and Administrative Costs / Auxiliaries	Student Services Building, Rm 301, 8:30-10:30
4/21/2014	SRA27 Administrative Requirements & Cost Principles	Training Center, 2:30-4:30
4/27/2015	SRA21 State of Florida Agencies	Strozier Library, Room 005A, 8:30-10:30

FSU Awards Report Now Available

A monthly awards report is now available online. This report will allow interested faculty, staff and others, to learn more about who has been recently awarded research grants. Learn more, and access this report at the Research Awards page.

Funding Opportunities

View the pdf to access some of the latest funding opportunities available for the arts, humanities, social sciences, STEM disciplines and medicine.

Washington Update

Please click on the link above to learn of recent activities in Washington D.C. affecting higher education. Included are budget and appropriations updates, new funding announcements and other important campus related issues.

Council on Research and Creativity Updates

First Year Assistant Professor (FYAP) Grant Writing Workshop
This year’s First Year Assistant Professor grant recipients are required to attend the FYAP Grant Writing Workshop scheduled for Thursday, May 7, 2015 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the FSU Alumni Center. In addition, last year’s FYAPs will display posters representative of their accomplishments during their first year as assistant professor at FSU.

The following deadlines have passed:

Equipment and Infrastructure Enhancement Grant (EIEG) funding decisions will be made mid-April
Planning Grant (PG) funding decisions will be made mid-April
Small Grant Program (SGP) funding decisions will be made mid-April

For a listing of all Spring CRC grant recipients and awardees, watch for a listing in the May Office of Research Newsletter.

All program submission dates are closed for the 2014 – 2015 academic year. Please look for program updates in mid-August for the 2015 – 2016 academic year.

For more information about our programs visit: http://www.research.fsu.edu/research-offices/opd/crc/.

Marine Lab Open House

The Coastal and Marine Laboratory will be hosting an open house, Restoring Resiliency, Protecting Our Oceans & Coastlines, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 25. The open house will feature tours of the 65-foot research vessel the Apalachee, displays and activities presented by scientists on their research, snail races, and a showing of the documentary “Saving Sawfish.” For more information visit the Marine Lab website.

Coastal and Marine Lab beekeeping conservation lecture

What began in 2007 with two hives, two queens, and thousands of bees has grown to Bobbee's Honey & Pollination, with 100+ hives housing "too many bees to count." Managed by Bob Livingston, Bobbee's produces tupelo and other honeys, including a prize-winning honey called 'Ocheesee Wildflower'.

On April 9 from 7 p.m. – 9 p.m., Bob will share basic information on honey bees and beekeeping, including the three casts of bees in a beehive, tools of the trade used in beekeeping, diseases & pests, Colony Collapse Disorder, products of the hive and the importance of bees to our food supply, the economy, and the environment.

For more information, visit: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs103/1110134778130/archive/1120344194486.html

Coastal and Marine Lab Art in Nature photography workshop

On April 11 from 5 p.m. – 10 p.m., the Coastal and Marine Lab will present “Art in Nature - The Real Florida: Philosophy & Artistry of Photography with Rex Adams.”

This workshop will include:

Discussions on photography and art philosophy
A preview of Rex's work
Field work at sunset for shoot
Dinner break and working on student photos

Class limit is 12 people. You will need a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera, tripod, laptop, and something to eat for dinner.

Want to stay overnight at the FSUCML? Contact Durene Gilbert at degilbert@fsu.edu or (850) 697-4095. For more information, visit http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs103/1110134778130/archive/1120196375755.html.

Award Memorializes Jim Brooks

The Graduate School has created the Dr. James S. “Jim” Brooks Graduate Student Award in Materials Science and Engineering to memorialize the late Physics Department chair who passed away last September. The purpose of the award is to encourage academically motivated graduate students to seek opportunities within this field of study at Florida State University. To learn more about the award, including how you can contribute, visit its website.