RESEARCH INTEGRITY AND COMPLIANCE

Jamie Peno Assistant Vice President for Research Integrity and Compliance

In FY22, the Research Integrity and Compliance team continued our commitment to ensuring transparency, collaboration, efficiency, and consistency in research compliance operations.

We integrated UNT’s Biosafety Program into our area and added a Biosafety Officer position to our team. The integration strengthened compliance by providing effective monitoring of biosafety protocols and our collaboration with the Risk Management Services team. The Biosafety Program oversees and reviews research protocols involved in both teaching and research, and in areas of overlap, it coordinates with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and the Radiation Safety Committee when applicable.

The IRB Program provided additional recruitment resources to our research community by joining ResearchMatch, a national recruitment registry that brings together researchers and people who are interested in volunteering to participate in health-related research studies. Additionally, Tango Card and Greenphire’s ClinCard platforms were implemented to provide researchers with more compensation tools and resources.

The IACUC Program implemented an electronic system through Huron Research Suite for researchers to electronically submit their research protocols. The Program is part of the Grants and Research Administration Management Suite (GRAMS) software solution. With this implementation, researchers will have the ability to complete their IACUC protocols in GRAMS with the goal of streamlining processes.

Programmatic improvements were made to our International Affiliations and Foreign Influence Program to safeguard our research endeavors while supporting our international collaborations. The goal of our program is to be welcoming to all individuals in a safe and inclusive manner while maintaining compliance and meeting the highest ethical standards.

Lastly, we continued to focus on research integrity by providing ___ training opportunities to the research community to increase awareness and to continue our education and outreach efforts.

Research And Development

Aaron Roberts Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation

In FY22, Research Development continued to work to improve opportunities for faculty to garner extramural funding through workshops, seed grants, and proposal support. The Proposal Manager Program consisting of seven full-time professionals who help to identify opportunities, create research teams, and manage submission of large proposals resulted in several new multi-PI awards from federal agencies including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and UNT’s first ever award from the Keck Foundation.

Faculty-led workshops were conducted on opportunities from the National Institutes of Health (18 attendees) and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (27 attendees). Two grantsmanship training workshops, including one for faculty and one for postdocs/graduate students) were conducted virtually by the AtKisson Group, with nearly 200 registrants. The Research BREAKS series, an informal research education series, was held monthly covering “nuts and bolts” topics ranging from cost-share to the National Science Foundation (NSF) REU program. Research Development also managed the Limited Submissions and Research Seed Grant programs. This year, 34 applications for Seed Grants were received and eight teams of researchers funded at $10,000 each.

Finally, to promote collaboration and celebrate faculty research, Research Development and research communications founded the new Research on Tap series. Held monthly, Research on Tap highlights a short Ted-style talk from a UNT faculty member at a local venue open to the public. Beginning in January, Research on Tap featured seven faculty from seven departments covering topics ranging from supply chain issues to inclusion in education to astronomy.

Research Centers

Center for Agile and

Adaptive Additive Manufacturing

(CAAM) — UNT’s CAAAM has positioned Texas as a leader in additive manufacturing innovation and workforce development. Many innovations now are feasible through CAAAM’s synergistic approach involving computational processes, materials modeling and in-situ and ex in-situ process, materials analysis/diagnostics along with data and decision sciences and machine learning sciences. The center is poised to forge innovative interdisciplinary collaborations across a multitude of science and engineering aspects of additive manufacturing including cybersecurity, data and decision sciences, complex logistics and supply chain, and high-performance computing. Additionally, the center works to address acute shortages in the manufacturing workforce by empowering companies to embark on additive manufacturing innovation and create industry-research partnerships with regional and multinational manufacturing industries and their partners to meet the needs of public, private, federal and defense industry domains. These research and industrial collaborative activities have resulted in generating nearly $12 million in external funding.

Center for Integrated Intelligent Mobility Systems (CIIMS)

— The university is encouraging integrated, intelligent mobility systems such as connected and autonomous vehicle research, spanning several disciplines including engineering, business, science, information, and health and public service. Researchers and students are working collaboratively on the complexities inherent in the field, including the technology itself, the data collection that helps drive its development and planning, and the policy and business practices necessary to support it.

Center

for Racial and Ethnic Equity in Health and Society

(CREEHS) — CREEHS works to increase the overall quality of life for all Texans and to foster an environment for economic growth and innovation by narrowing longstanding racial and ethnic gaps in health care. Grounded in a biosocial frame of the determinants of health, CREEHS and its community partners investigate health quality, health policy and related systems by examining the economic, social and environmental factors that have contributed to health disparities in the state. CREEHS research projects promote health equity across the DFW metroplex and the State of Texas.

Institutes Of Research Excellence

Advanced Environmental Research Institute — In FY22, the Advanced Environmental Research Institute (AERI) expanded its membership to 30 researchers across six colleges, allowing for increased multidisciplinary team-based research and proposal submissions. Additionally, Lauren Fischer from the Department of Public Administration was appointed as the associate director of AERI to assist director Amie Lund in facilitating collaborations within the social sciences and engagement in community outreach activities in support of AERI’s mission to foster interdisciplinary environmental research and education. During FY22, 61 proposals were submitted totaling more than $22 million, which represents a 20% increase in submissions and a nearly 3-fold increase in funding requested over FY21. AERI researchers were awarded more than $4.8 million in new funding from various federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as foundation gifts to support ongoing research in environmental monitoring, restoration, conservation, sustainability, water usage in crop production, the impact of environmental stressors in development and physiologic function across species, toxicology, and issues surrounding urban development and environmental justice. Furthermore, a new AERI Advisory Board was assembled, comprised of ten members from local industry, government, non-profit organizations, and academia. AERI Advisory Board members are actively engaged in the institute and are assisting with strengthening faculty relationships and student opportunities with ESGfocused industry partners.

Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Processes Institute — The Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Processes Institute (AMMPI) reorganized its membership by adding an associate director, Wonbong Choi from Department of Materials Science and Engineering, an original member from 2016. AMMPI also reorganized and formed its leadership teams to include a both a six-member leadership team along with a 14-member team. AMMPI members brought in more than $6.5 million in research funding FY 2021, highlighted by a $5.5 million research grant from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory with five AMMPI members (Rajiv Mishra, Raj Banerjee, Tom Scharf, Srinivasan Srivilliputhur and Marcus Young), a $500,000 CAREER National Science Foundation grant for Diana Berman and a $498,000 National Science Foundation grant for Francis D’Souza.

BioDiscovery Institute — BioDiscovery Institute — The BioDiscovery Institute (BDI) aims to deliver research solutions that underpin the utilization of living systems for the production of polymers, oils and additives, chemical feedstocks, composite materials, proteins and other macromolecules, bioactive molecules, and biofuels. It gathers a collaborative, interdisciplinary network of biochemists, molecular biologists, chemists, engineers and computer scientists. BDI network increased in FY 2022 with four new faculty members: Lee Hughes (Biological Sciences), Diana Berman (Material Sciences), Clement Chan and Brian Meckes (Biomedical Engineering). During FY 2022, BDI research projects were supported by 34 grants and contracts totaling $3.1 million in research expenditures. The interdisciplinary research activities led to 79 scholarly publications and six patent applications. For FY 2022, the BDI is particularly proud of our junior faculty’s accomplishments: Drs. Antunes, Chan, Henard, and Skellam are leading new multidisciplinary projects funded by the Welch Foundation, NIH, NSF-DOE, and Keck Foundation; and Dr. Berman received the prestigious UNT Early Career Award for Research and Creativity.

Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research (JMI) — The Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research (JMI) expanded to more than 40 researchers from across six colleges during the past year. Researchers submitted 42 proposals requesting $29M proposals to federal sources and 10 to non-federal. As a result of these proposal submissions, $1.6M was awarded. The institute jointly funded the Center for Integrated Intelligent Mobility Systems (CIIMS) with the Dean of the College of Engineering to advance the study of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), autonomous ground vehicles (AVs), and UAV to AV communications. JMI continuously offers seed grants to support the formation of multidisciplinary teams pursuing externally funded, NRUF eligible grant opportunities. Future plans include pursuit of a U.S. Department of Transportation University Transportation Center and collaborative research between NASA and the

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in the areas of UAVs, AVs and increasing supply chain resiliency. In addition, the institute continues to maintain a research office in Austin manned by two research professors conducting research in support of the Texas Department of Transportation.

Research Core Facilities

Core research facilities, available for researchers across the university’s campus on a fee-for-service basis, are under the daily management of Aaron Roberts, associate vice president of research and innovation. The cores are designed to increase access to facilities for all UNT researchers and supports future development of cross-college and cross-departmental collaboration.

Current core facilities:

• BioAnalytical Facility, featuring state-of-the-art mass spectrometers with advanced capabilities for separating and quantifying small molecules and macromolecules

• Genomics Center, providing RNA and DNA sequence analysis using the latest technology

• Greenhouse Support Services Facility, including three major greenhouses: one on the roof of the Life Sciences Complex, one outside the Science Research Building and another at Discovery Park

• High-Performance Computing Services, through the Texas Advanced Computing Center in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin

• Materials Research Facility, offering high-end materials assessment instruments

• Vivarium which provides support to animal researchers