New help for new grants

Rockefeller wouldn’t run the way it does if it weren’t for the dozens of capable leaders who run the administrative departments and support functions that see to things like paying our bills, cleaning our floors, fixing our computers and caring for our mice. This year we’ve made two important appointments at the department head level that I want to tell you about.
    This spring, Ravi Tolwani joined us as the new head of our animal research facility, succeeding Fred Quimby, who is retiring at the end of the summer. Ravi has previously run the animal center at Stanford, and he’s a practicing scientist himself, so he understands the needs of our faculty who rely on mice and other animals for their research. He’ll not only assume responsibility for running a complex facility that employs 90 people and cares for tens of thousands of animals, he’ll also be working with our construction office and a group of outside architects to design and build a 31,000 square foot addition to LARC that will increase its capacity and allow new kinds of experiments to be done. (There’s a story about Ravi in the May 25 issue of BenchMarks.)
    I’m also pleased to welcome the director of our newly established Office of Sponsored Research and Program Development, Gila Budescu, who will join the university in September. Gila is important for Rockefeller because she’ll be making some substantial changes to help our faculty better compete for grants.
    Over the past few years, our faculty members have been under increasing pressure to bring in grant money to fund their research. At the same time, the process of applying for grants — particularly large collaborative grants that span multiple labs and multiple disciplines — has become more complex and difficult. While the university’s Office of Sponsored Programs has provided assistance with some of the managerial burdens of applying for and administrating grants, they have not been in a position to actively assist our faculty with forming collaborations and matching projects with funding agencies and initiatives. The university’s heads of lab have asked to have somebody who can help them survey opportunities, plan strategically, serve as an adviser — particularly to younger faculty and those who are not familiar with the grants landscape — and facilitate submissions.
    Earlier this year, Mike Young led a committee — comprised of Mary Jeanne Kreek, Bruce McEwen, John McKinney and Ralph Steinman and assisted by Emil Gotschlich — to find a leader for the new initiative described above, and an individual capable of providing leadership for the existing Office of Sponsored Programs formerly run by Jon Hart, who has resigned from the university. The committee interviewed several candidates this winter, and identified Gila as their first choice. She accepted the offer in May.
    Gila did her undergraduate and master’s work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from The Technion in Haifa, Israel. She has worked as a research scientist and as a director of research programs, and for the last several years has served as assistant director for research and external affairs at the Institute of Bionanotechnology in Medicine at Northwestern University, performing many of the tasks she will carry out as director of the Office of Sponsored Research and Program Development here. She has relationships with many of the organizations that issue biomedical research grants, and she has experience with developing successful large-scale, collaborative research proposals.
    We are pleased to have Ravi here with us and look forward to welcoming Gila to Rockefeller.