The North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) will provide $914,000 over two years in supplemental new faculty start-up funds to nine academic departments at NDSU.
The awards will help support hiring of 14 new faculty in biological sciences, chemistry and molecular biology, civil engineering and construction, computer science and operations research, electrical and computer engineering, mathematics, pharmaceutical sciences, psychology and statistics.
“Providing supplemental funds to our departments allows them to attract nationally-competitive researchers who are able to quickly tool-up their laboratories and hire graduate students,” said Philip Boudjouk, vice president for research, creative activities and technology transfer.
Boudjouk describes the program as critical to NDSU’s research and education mission. “Obtaining preliminary results quickly allows new researchers to publish in peer-reviewed journals, which in turn provides competitiveness to the grant proposals they are writing early in their careers,” he said, also emphasizing the role of the state of North Dakota in providing funds for research and economic development. “Our faculty and administrators consistently tell us that the New Faculty Start-Up program is ND EPSCoR’s most important program.”
Department proposals for the program were especially strong this year, according to David Givers, interim co-project director. “All nine of the NDSU proposals scored in the ‘fund or fund-if-possible’ categories. This strong showing made the case for us to fund all nine proposals, for $914,000, but not at the full request levels that totaled $1.3 million,” he said.
Funded through federal-state-private sector partnerships, ND EPSCoR manages a comprehensive research development plan involving infrastructure improvement programs, science outreach and recruitment programs and technology transfer and commercialization programs.
ND EPSCoR’s partners include the State of North Dakota and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). ND EPSCoR also coordinates the state’s EPSCoR activities with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.