Concurrent Sessions, Deep Dives and Fishbowl Discussions

The public pays for research so the public should benefit from research. Science communication and broad advocacy helps research reach the public. Science communication includes infographics, social media, science days and exhibits in malls, parks, libraries, museums, archives and galleries and lots of other ways that research reaches the public. In an age of dis/mis-information and declining trust in science, helping re-build trust in science will be critical to securing a future of publicly funded research. Drawing on national public opinion data, advocacy campaigns, and lessons learned from the federal funding landscape, participants will gain practical strategies for communicating research value to non-scientific audiences, engaging the public authentically, and helping to rebuild the trust that sustains federal investment in science. Participants will also explore how advocacy is not confined to Washington but is something every researcher, administrator, and science champion can practice every day to sustain and strengthen federal investment in science.

Financial reconciliation and close-out are often treated as end-of-study tasks, leading to delayed revenue, unresolved discrepancies, and avoidable compliance risk. In reality, they are critical control points that determine the financial performance of a clinical trial.
This session reframes reconciliation and close-out as structured, proactive processes embedded across the study lifecycle. Participants will learn how to align clinical operations, and finance to ensure accurate charge capture, timely invoicing, and efficient study closure. The session will highlight common breakdowns, including missed billable events, payment delays, and poor cross-functional coordination, and provide practical strategies to address them.

Closeouts are among the most compliance-intensive and most overlooked phases of the award lifecycle. From final financial reports and effort certifications to equipment disposition and residual balance management, the closeout process demands precision, cross-functional coordination, and a clear understanding of sponsor requirements. This session takes a practical yet regulatory-grounded approach to the full closeout workflow, drawing on 2 CFR 200, NIH Grants Policy Statement, and FAR-based contract requirements. Attendees will walk away with actionable frameworks for identifying at-risk awards, clearing common bottlenecks, and building institutional processes that prevent last-minute scrambles. Real-world scenarios such as late reports, PI disengagement, and system reconciliation challenges will be used to ground the discussion in situations research administrators encounter every day.

If your institution handles health records, genomic data, biometric information, or geolocation data — and virtually every research university does — the U.S. Department of Justice's new Bulk Data Transfer Rule may already apply to you. This sweeping federal regulation restricts or outright prohibits certain data transactions that could expose sensitive U.S. datasets to individuals or entities in designated "Countries of Concern," and it reaches far deeper into everyday academic operations than most administrators realize. International research collaborations, data-sharing arrangements with overseas partners, visiting scholar access to institutional systems, and contracts with foreign vendors or service providers are all potential compliance flashpoints. The consequences of noncompliance are serious: legal liability, loss of federal funding, breach of contractual obligations, and significant reputational harm to your institution.What makes this Rule especially challenging — and especially important for research administrators to understand — is that it does not fit neatly into any single compliance framework your institution likely already has in place. It is not a conventional privacy regulation, not a standard cybersecurity requirement, and not a traditional export control — it is all three at once, and most existing compliance programs are not designed to address it. This one-hour session will cut through that complexity and give you a practical, working understanding of the Rule's scope, its key definitions, and the concrete steps leading research universities are already taking to assess their exposure and build compliant data governance frameworks. The Rule is in effect now, and the time to understand your institution's obligations is before a problem arises.

This session will explore the role of the Research Development Offices (RDOs) to connect researchers and funding agencies aiming to strengthen international research collaborations —particularly between research institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income nations. We will present a triangular model of collaboration that builds institutional capacity and promotes equitable engagement across regions and sectors to develop research with global impact. As an illustrative case, we will draw on the final report of a British Academy-funded initiative led by Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil, which convened regional workshops to foster dialogue among researchers, research managers and funders at local and international level. The initiative mapped structural barriers and identified strategies to overcome the challenges enhancing the role of RDOs in supporting long-term, inclusive, and transparent partnerships. Participants will gain practical insights into how RDOs can act as bridges between institutional priorities and international funding opportunities, how it can better support equityable-oriented collaboration, and how communication strategies can enhance transparency, engagement, and impact. The session will combine conceptual framing with real-world case studies and an open discussion, offering participants replicable strategies to strengthen research ecosystems and navigate the complexities of global cooperation.

The Legal Labyrinth of AI Research Both researchers and those managing the research process are in a brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI). Issues affected by AI include those arising from research into AI, research using AI, research administration and management using AI, and protecting individuals, institutions, and society as a whole from AI gone wrong. The legal issues to be addressed are diverse and often not subject to any clear precedent. This session will begin to deal with the many areas of discussion and conflict that are subject to the dawn of Artificial Intelligence as reality instead of science fiction.

Are you a new research administrator wondering how to chart a clear path for your career? You’re not alone—many professionals enter this dynamic field without a roadmap for growth. This interactive session is designed to change that by providing a practical, step-by-step framework for building your personalized career guide. Think of it as a “choose your own adventure” for your professional journey—where you decide the direction and pace that best fit your goals. During this session, you’ll discover proven strategies for identifying core competencies and leveraging institutional and national resources to accelerate your development. We’ll explore how to set achievable short-term objectives and long-term goals that align with both your aspirations and your organization’s priorities. But that’s not all—this presentation will highlight the power of mentorship, networking, and continuous learning as essential drivers of success in an ever-evolving research administration landscape. By the end of the session, you won’t just leave with ideas—you’ll walk away with actionable tools to design a career roadmap that positions you for growth and impact. Don’t miss this opportunity to invest in your future and unlock your potential. Your career in research administration starts here—are you ready to take the next step? Come join us and let us help you plan your new career trajectory.

Our presentation outlines best practices for strengthening communication between faculty and research administrators, emphasizing the importance of tailoring policy guidance, procedural updates, and strategic ideas to diverse academic audiences, including faculty, institutional leadership, and sponsored research offices. It also addresses how research administration units can effectively adapt to evolving institutional and governmental funding policies by reallocating resources and providing targeted training, ensuring that staff remain current with new requirements and procedures. Our presentation also explores the growing diversity of research funding opportunities arising from shifts in government budgets and strategic priorities, offering guidance on how to engage with a broad range of funding entities. Finally, it highlights dynamic strategies for fostering international research collaboration, including initiating partnerships with foreign institutions and pursuing support from national and global sponsors across industry, philanthropy, and investment banking sectors to sustain and expand research initiatives. Our presentation will highlight the core responsibilities of research administration: facilitating clear and effective communication among stakeholders, ensuring compliance with changing institutional and governmental policies, strategically responding to changes in funding landscapes, and supporting faculty in identifying and securing diverse funding opportunities. Additionally, it emphasizes the expanding role of research administration in fostering international partnerships and funding opportunities, which are essential for growing research programs in a competitive and global environment.

As competition for grant funding continues to intensify, the ability to build strong, collaborative administrative teams has emerged as a critical determinant of institutional success. Increasing sponsor expectations, heightened regulatory complexity, and the scale of multi investigator proposals have challenged traditional, department based models of research administration. In response, the University of South Florida has undertaken a strategic transition from decentralized administrative support to a more consolidated, institution wide model designed to better align expertise, reduce redundancy, and promote shared ownership of research development outcomes. This presentation examines how intentional collaboration across administrative units strengthens institutional research capacity, fosters emerging synergy, and positions institutions for sustained research growth. By breaking down silos and encouraging cross functional engagement, the consolidated model enables more consistent support for investigators, enhances proposal quality, and improves responsiveness across the research lifecycle. Particular emphasis is placed on how shared goals, transparent communication, and clearly defined roles contribute to a culture of trust and collective problem solving. Drawing on coordinated efforts between faculty development and research support offices, we highlight key innovations implemented to centralize training grant support, streamline administrative and proposal development processes, and strengthen faculty competitiveness from early concept development through submission and post award management. The presentation concludes with a candid discussion of challenges encountered during this transition, lessons learned through implementation, and practical approaches for institutions seeking to move toward more collaborative, scalable administrative models that support long term research excellence.

Successful award setup in a modern research environment depends far less on system features and far more on the quality, structure, and reliability of the data that supports award records, particularly during a transition to the cloud or a major system implementation. Institutions often discover that long-standing data issues surface most acutely during award setup, where incomplete sponsor information, inconsistent award terms, misaligned project hierarchies, and legacy workarounds can directly impact compliance, reporting, and downstream financial and effort processes. This session examines the most common data quality and configuration challenges institutions face when implementing or re-implementing award management processes, with a specific focus on how poor data readiness complicates accurate award setup and maintenance. The session discusses how AI-enabled techniques can be used to assist with identifying missing or inconsistent award data, accelerating data normalization, and flagging potential setup issues before they propagate across systems. Equal emphasis is placed on where human expertise, review, and compliance-minded guardrails remain essential—particularly in interpreting award terms, applying institutional policy, and ensuring sponsor expectations are met. Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of the award data conversion and setup lifecycle, strategies for improving award data quality before and during implementation, and realistic guidance on using AI responsibly to support—rather than replace—sound research administration judgment and governance.

This session will feature an open, interactive discussion focused on how colleges, universities, hospital and other research institutions are currently using artificial intelligence to support the operational and financial management of the research enterprise. Rather than presenting a single prescriptive framework, the conversation will highlight a range of practical examples that reflect emerging practices, shared challenges, lessons learned, and real-world applications already being explored across institutions of varying size, complexity, and research intensity. Examples of topics to be covered include how institutions are leveraging AI to analyze internal and publicly available data to generate actionable insights that inform decision-making. Research enterprises generate significant volumes of data across proposal development, awards management, compliance, finance, and clinical operations. AI tools are being used to synthesize this information to identify funding trends, evaluate proposal success rates, forecast revenue, benchmark performance against peer institutions, assess award pipelines, and support more strategic allocation of resources. Discussion will consider how these capabilities can move institutions beyond static reporting toward more predictive, forward-looking analytics that strengthen planning, competitiveness, and financial sustainability. Additional topics include the integration of AI into proposal development processes. Institutions are experimenting with AI tools to interpret funding opportunity announcements, summarize sponsor priorities, identify alignment between institutional strengths and sponsor objectives, and assist in drafting or refining components of proposals. Conversation will also address ethical and governance considerations associated with these practices, including disclosure requirements, data privacy, intellectual integrity, authorship transparency, and the development of institutional policies to guide responsible use. Attention will be given to how institutions can balance efficiency gains with compliance expectations and academic standards. The discussion will also cover applications of AI in clinical research administration. Clinical trials present operational and financial complexities that can benefit from enhanced data analysis and workflow support. Examples include feasibility assessments, patient recruitment strategies, document review, workflow optimization, compliance monitoring, and performance tracking. These applications demonstrate how AI can reduce administrative bottlenecks, accelerate study startup timelines, improve coordination among stakeholders, and strengthen oversight of clinical research operations. Operational process improvement will be another example of the topics addressed. Institutions are exploring AI-powered solutions for travel and expense management, automated receipt capture, policy compliance checks, anomaly detection, and financial reporting. These applications illustrate how AI can streamline routine administrative tasks, improve accuracy, enhance internal controls, and reduce manual workload within research administration functions. Strengthening these processes directly supports effective financial stewardship of sponsored funds and institutional resources. The session will also include examples of everyday productivity use cases that are becoming increasingly common across research administration teams. These include summarizing lengthy documents, drafting communications, organizing complex information, generating reports, and creating pivot tables without advanced technical expertise. By lowering technical barriers and accelerating routine workflows, AI tools enable research administrators and institutional leaders to focus more time on strategic analysis, stakeholder engagement, and mission-driven priorities. Collectively, these examples will frame a broad, peer-driven dialogue about how institutions are thoughtfully exploring and integrating artificial intelligence across the research enterprise. The session is designed to encourage shared learning and practical exchange, providing insight into how AI is being applied today to enhance insight, efficiency, compliance, and financial management within higher education research environments.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future consideration in clinical research—it is actively shaping how institutions identify participants, assess protocol feasibility, clean data, detect safety signals, and support trial decision-making. Vendors are marketing AI-enabled platforms as efficiency solutions, sponsors are expecting institutions to keep pace, and investigators are increasingly relying on algorithmic insights. Yet adoption is often moving faster than institutional governance. For research administrators, this creates a pressing question: how do we support innovation while protecting our institutions from regulatory and legal exposure? This session examines AI in clinical trials through a Research Law lens, with a focus on institutional accountability and operational responsibility. We will explore how existing regulatory frameworks—particularly Good Clinical Practice (GCP), FDA oversight expectations, and documentation standards—apply to AI-supported systems. What does “validation” mean when a tool incorporates machine learning? What documentation must exist to withstand an FDA inspection? When does reliance on AI cross the line into impermissible delegation of investigator responsibility? And critically, who bears liability when algorithmic bias, flawed outputs, or data integrity failures impact trial conduct? While the session will provide high-level legal analysis of these issues, it will remain grounded in practical realities facing research administrators. Participants will examine how AI introduces new risk vectors in areas such as vendor contracting, oversight structures, training, audit readiness, and institutional policy development. The discussion will address how to assess AI tools before implementation, what questions administrators should be asking sponsors and vendors, how to structure oversight mechanisms that preserve investigator accountability, and how to document decision-making processes in a defensible manner. Importantly, this presentation recognizes that research administrators are not passive recipients of innovation—they are operational leaders and change agents within the research enterprise. As AI becomes embedded in trial infrastructure, administrators are uniquely positioned to bridge legal requirements, compliance expectations, and day-to-day trial operations. This session will provide a practical governance framework that enables institutions to responsibly integrate AI while maintaining compliance, protecting research participants, and safeguarding institutional reputation. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of where legal exposure exists, how regulators are likely to evaluate AI-enabled trials, and what concrete steps institutions can implement now to prepare for inspection and enforcement scrutiny. Rather than framing AI as either purely transformative or inherently risky, this session will offer a balanced, actionable roadmap for managing AI as both an innovation tool and a potential source of institutional liability.

Research managers sit at the intersection of funding rules, institutional governance, and impact expectations (internal and external). The challenge is not only just to comply, but to avoid building parallel bureaucracies for every programme and every impact requirement internally, which makes things more complicated (the paradox of asking for simplification centrally, while increasing complication internally (at the institution level). This session proposes a practical approach: reduce fragmentation by aligning core institutional workflows (proposal development, project delivery, reporting, evaluation, learning) with a small set of shared impact logics (focus on key research policies, so that impact becomes simpler to evidence and more useful to steer. This session will unpack how research managers can: - Simplify institutional processes by identifying common denominators across EU schemes (Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, Digital Europe, EIC, cohesion policy, external action funding, EIB, blended finance), and - Amplify institutional performance by embedding impact thinking into governance in a way that supports portfolio choices, learning cycles, and strategic positioning. 

Research compliance programs are a framework of committees and designated individuals whose responsibilities ensure that institutional research is conducted safely and in accordance with federal and institutional requirements. Each of these roles often comes with its own acronym to learn, which can feel overwhelming to those new to the field. In this session, we will provide an overview of the duties and responsibilities of the Institutional Official (IO), Conflict of Interest Official (COI Official), Deciding Official (DO), and Research Integrity Officer (RIO) as well as the IACUC, IRB, and IBC. The presenters will share insights into who may serve in these roles and how to best support their success in these impactful positions. The session will also highlight the operational professionals who serve as the research compliance support system, ensuring regulatory requirements are met while fostering trust, transparency, and positive working relationships with researchers. Attendees will learn when these roles and committees intersect, emphasizing collaboration to ensure that all aspects of the compliance program function effectively without unnecessary duplication of effort or conflicting messaging. This is an introductory session for those relatively new to research administration and looking to become acquainted with the core individuals and committees involved in the research compliance program.

This session examines how Research Project Managers (RPMs) assess project complexity to determine when project management support is needed, what type and level of support is most appropriate, and how that support should evolve across the pre award and post award phases of sponsored projects. Participants will explore how RPMs evaluate a range of project characteristics including funding mechanisms, compliance and regulatory requirements, stakeholder and partner environments, team structure and capacity, institutional considerations, timelines, and Principal Investigator experience and how these factors collectively inform engagement decisions. Through discussion and applied examples, the session highlights how complexity is not driven by a single factor, but by the interaction of multiple dimensions that shape risk, coordination needs, and execution demands over time. Emphasis is placed on applying evaluative judgment to align RPM support models with planning and execution demands, project risk, and institutional responsibilities, in order to support both effective delivery and compliance within the research lifecycle. Participants will also examine how project management needs may shift as projects transition from proposal development into award execution, and how RPM involvement can be scaled or adapted in response to changing sponsor expectations, team dynamics, or compliance obligations. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for assessing complexity and calibrating RPM engagement models across the research project lifecycle in ways that are intentional, risk aware, and aligned with sponsor, team, and institutional priorities.

Assets acquired with federal funding are critical aspect of any institution’s research portfolio, yet these resources tend to be neglected or simply do not garner much attention while they are under our care. However, the recent heightened scrutiny of assets management during audits has proven that mismanagement of federally funded assets can lead to negative consequences for an institution's research portfolio. As stewards of government property, institutions are expected to comply with federal regulations and must implement a compliant asset management system that ensures adequate control over safeguarding those assets throughout their life cycle. A robust asset management system is essential for facilitating the acquisition of assets and supporting their reporting, disposition and audit. Such a system demonstrates effective control over the usage and safeguarding of assets, ensuring they are used efficiently and responsibly. As property management becomes one of the top findings identified during single and sponsor audits, institutions must ensure they have adequate procedures and systems in place to facilitate accountability for assets entrusted into their care While asset management might not be a thrilling topic to discuss, it’s crucial for keeping your research portfolio compliant with federal regulations. This session will take a deep dive into an institution government funded assets and how they can be managed appropriately with compliance in mind. We will explore strategies for enhancing property management and reporting, address audit preparedness, and mitigate associated risks to avoiding the pitfalls of mismanagement of assets. Furthermore, we will explore how to achieve compliance and accountability while enhancing research integrity. By fostering collaboration across departments, we will learn how to safeguard your research portfolio and maintain a positive reputation to ensure that these valuable resources are well-protected throughout their life cycle. Join us for an engaging and insightful journey into best practices to ensure your institutional assets are well-managed for long-term success and compliance. Let's make asset management both effective and enjoyable.

For institutions seeking to highlight research impact and connect scholarship to broader public conversations, podcasting can be a practical and scalable communication tool. Join this multimedia session to hear from two podcasters from the research administration community. Each of these speakers produces a podcast featuring researchers from their university with an emphasis on their research impact. Dr. Kimberly Eck produces and hosts a podcast entitled Impact In Progress, which provides a platform for researchers from Emory University to discuss their research and the impact it’s having on the real world. Each episode features one researcher and follows the same conversational story arc, from importance to impact. Karen Fischer produces and hosts a podcast called Appalachian Excellence, which features faculty research, scholarship and creative activity that create solutions and inspire change. In each episode, she and her co-host talk with faculty and their students to explore the incredible research happening at Appalachian State University. In this session, we will share our experiences creating podcasts as a part of an intentional research communication strategy and how institutions can translate research into engaging, accessible conversations.

NIH has completely changed how international collaborators are funded and managed. The traditional model of a U.S. prime recipient issuing a foreign subaward is being replaced with a linked award structure, where the U.S. organization receives the PF5 or UF5 award and each foreign organization receives its own separate NIH award. Under the Parent PF5 funding announcement, foreign collaborators are no longer included as traditional subrecipients. Instead, each foreign organization must be proposed as its own International Project component, with required Foreign Justification attachments submitted at both the Overall level and for each foreign site. Foreign subawards are not permitted under this structure. This October discussion is designed for the “we have real examples now” phase. Participants will compare what they are seeing in funding outcomes (including whether NIH funds all components or only selected components), and we will review what the Notice of Award looks like in practice and how responsibilities are divided among NIH, the U.S. recipient, and each foreign recipient. We will also focus on the practical operational questions that institutions are actively working through, especially on the post-award side: how to obtain technical updates and timely deliverables when there is no traditional subaward agreement or invoice trail; what it means for clinical trials with international sites (including human subjects documentation, timelines, and coordination complexity); and how to support progress reporting expectations that may still be evolving. Because each linked recipient manages its own financial relationship with NIH, many traditional pass-through activities tied to foreign subawards may no longer apply (such as risk assessments, subrecipient invoice monitoring, and collecting audit documentation), but institutions still need clear coordination practices to stay aligned on science, data access, reporting inputs, and escalation when progress information is not provided. We will compare best practices, including when a non-financial MOU-style coordination agreement between the U.S. and foreign sites is helpful and what clauses are most useful. The session will also include discussion of legacy foreign subawards that were modified or restructured, including examples involving administrative supplement approaches.

This session focuses on the critical transition from proposal submission to award acceptance, equipping pre-award professionals with the skills to evaluate, negotiate, and manage complex award terms and conditions. Participants will explore key compliance and risk areas—including publication rights, intellectual property, indemnification, and Indirect Costs across federal, industry, and other sponsor types. The session also addresses nuanced scenarios such as international agreements, just-in-time (JIT) requirements, and evolving sponsor expectations. Through applied examples, participants will learn how to identify high-risk clauses, assess institutional impact, and determine appropriate negotiation strategies. Attention will also be given to anticipating contract amendments and managing changes to scope of work, particularly in industry-sponsored projects. This session builds practical expertise in making informed, strategic decisions that support both compliance and institutional priorities.

This presentation examines how research administrators, leaders, and support offices can effectively navigate periods of financial uncertainty and organizational volatility while also addressing the growing challenge of change fatigue within research institutions. Participants will gain insight into how shifting funding environments and government mandates contribute to organizational “whitewater,” often resulting in change fatigue. Through shared strategies and active discussion, attendees will learn approaches for developing resilient employees and strengthening institutional support structures. By integrating resilience-building practices with agile research management, this session will equip attendees with tools to maintain research momentum and support their teams amid ongoing and future change. In addition, the presentation will highlight practical techniques for enhancing communication, fostering trust, and encouraging adaptability across research units. Real-world examples will demonstrate how transparent planning, cross-departmental collaboration, and proactive workload management can reduce stress and empower teams to respond constructively to uncertainty. Participants will also explore methods for recognizing early signs of burnout and implementing supportive interventions that sustain engagement. By emphasizing both individual and organizational resilience, the session aims to help attendees cultivate a culture that not only withstands disruption but also leverages it as a meaningful opportunity for continuous improvement, long-term stability, and sustained innovation. Be prepared to share your best practices!

As research organizations take on larger and more complex grant portfolios, traditional post-award management processes are showing clear signs of strain. Manual oversight, fragmented data systems, and rising compliance demands are pushing teams to their operational limits. This session introduces a battle-tested AI Playbook—shaped by executive education experience and grounded in real-world research administration practice—to help leaders shift from labor-intensive workflows to AI-enabled efficiency. Rather than focusing on hype or abstract promises, we will dig into the practical mechanics of implementation. Participants will learn how to evaluate return on investment, assess data readiness, and identify gaps that could impede responsible AI deployment. We will also address more challenging territory, such as navigating evolving compliance expectations, ensuring audit transparency, and supporting workforce transformation as automation becomes an integral part of the research enterprise. A core focus of the session is recognizing where AI can immediately add value. Tools capable of automating repetitive, rule-based tasks—such as data entry, routine reporting, and preliminary proposal or document checks—can free administrators to concentrate on higher-order responsibilities like financial forecasting, risk analysis, and strategic decision-making. Attendees will leave with a structured roadmap for identifying high-impact use cases, prioritizing automation opportunities, and establishing the processes needed to implement, monitor, and continuously improve AI solutions. By the end, participants will be equipped not only to adopt AI, but to do so in a deliberate, responsible, and transformative way.

As research portfolios grow in size and complexity, institutions are increasingly turning to a distinct and evolving role to fill critical gaps in support: the Research Project Manager (RPM). Situated at the intersection of research administration and project management, RPMs bring specialized expertise that goes beyond traditional post-award grants management. Rather than simply applying project management principles to a research context, effective RPMs serve as translators who are fluent in the languages of operations, efficiency, guiding developing and established research teams, and risk management to bridge a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. This session will examine how RPMs benefit principal investigators, project teams, institutions, and the broader research operations field by analyzing actual-use scenarios, exploring how and why the role has evolved in response to the increasing demands placed on research enterprises, and how institutions have leveraged RPMs to deliver consistent, high-impact, concierge-level support to their research communities. Whether you are a research administrator considering a transition into research project management, an institutional leader exploring how to build RPM capacity, or simply curious about this rapidly evolving field, this session offers a practical introduction to Research Project Management and its growing role in supporting research excellence across the lifecycle.

Research administration can feel like constant wave management—urgent requests, shifting federal rules, budget pressure, and compliance crosscurrents. Many professionals spend their days reacting to whatever hits next. But what if, instead of fighting the tide, you built your own navigation system? This high-energy, interactive session invites research administrators at every level to design a practical, personalized toolkit tailored to their portfolio, authority, and career goals. Through fast-paced exercises and structured peer exchange, participants will identify their strongest “tides”—risk exposure, workflow friction, scope creep, and communication gaps—and begin building tools to manage them with clarity and control. This is not a lecture. It is a working session. Participants will actively create: • A customized Research Administration Toolkit blueprint • A complexity-weighted portfolio tracking framework • A workflow friction audit tool • A stakeholder communication map • A plan with one immediate upgrade for their current work tools • A checklist to keep momentum Whether you oversee teams or manage awards directly, you will leave with tools you can use immediately. You’ll leave with fresh perspective, usable tools, and plan not just ideas. The goal is simple: shift from reactive survival to an intentional straight forward strategy encouraging steady, realistic progress. Stop treading water. Start steering. Ride the tide—and own it.

Research administrators increasingly face growing data complexity, compliance requirements, and expectations for faster turnaround, often without proportional increases in staffing. While commercial AI and automation tools promise relief, many institutions, particularly smaller and mid-sized universities, struggle with cost, data security concerns, and integration challenges. This session presents a practical, in-house approach to building and deploying an AI-powered research administration assistant designed to support proposal tracking, compliance verification, and operational decision-making. Rather than relying on external cloud-based solutions, our institution developed a secure, locally governed AI agent integrated with structured proposal data and compliance records. The solution leverages existing infrastructure, enforces read-only query patterns, and incorporates institutional glossary controls to ensure accuracy, data security, and responsible AI use. Attendees will learn how the AI assistant supports real-time responses to operational questions (e.g., proposal trends, submission timelines, compliance training status), reduces manual reporting burden, and improves transparency across pre-award workflows. The presentation will outline architecture considerations, governance safeguards, implementation steps, and lessons learned from initial deployment. Designed with scalability in mind, this model demonstrates how institutions of varying size can responsibly integrate emerging technologies into research administration operations without large capital investments. Participants will leave with a replicable framework for evaluating, designing, and implementing secure AI-enabled tools to enhance efficiency, compliance oversight, and data-driven decision-making.

Effective research administration is essential for managing complex scientific collaborations, ensuring ethical compliance, and sustaining competitive grant portfolios. This Session draws on a decade long case study from the University of Ghana Medical School, where a dedicated Research Administration facility was set up to support the H3Africa Kidney Disease Network—a multi country, multi site initiative spanning nine centres. The case study from the University of Ghana Medical School provides a real world example of how a dedicated research administration unit can strengthen grant management, ensure ethical compliance, budgeting and support communication across multiple research sites. This session is especially valuable for professionals seeking to improve or establish research administration structures within their own institutions. By exploring the strategies used to support the H3Africa Network, participants will gain a deeper understanding of best practices in managing large grant portfolios, overseeing sub agreements, and facilitating collaboration across diverse teams. Overall, attending this session is highly relevant for anyone involved in research management, grant coordination, ethics oversight, or institutional capacity development, as it offers practical, experience based insights into building and sustaining effective research administration systems within complex, multi country scientific collaborations equips participants with the knowledge and strategies needed to strengthen research governance structures and support successful multidisciplinary research initiatives.

This session addresses the growing need for skilled and sustainable research administration workforces by highlighting mentoring and experiential learning as strategic capacity-building approaches. Grounded in Kolb’s (2014) Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), the presenters will showcase two structured professional development programs built around the four-stage learning cycle: • Concrete Experience (CE), e.g., Learning modules and readings • Reflective Observation (RO), e.g., Shadowing opportunities • Abstract Conceptualization (AC), e.g., Reflective writing, roundtable discussions • Active Experimentation (AE), e.g., hands-on budget building exercises Drawing on two case studies from East Tennessee State University (ETSU, regional public) and Penn State University (PSU, R1 land-grant), presenters will outline scalable program design, implementation strategies, assessment approaches, and lesson learned. The contrasting institutional contexts demonstrate how ELT-informed models can be adapted across diverse institutional environments. Attendees will receive adaptable, no-cost tools, including open-access learning modules, syllabus, checklists and templates. The session will conclude with an interactive activity in which attendees reflect on their institutional contexts and identify opportunities to adapt ELT-based training models, or launch new workforce development initiatives. Relevance: This session directly addresses SRAI’s commitment to strengthening research enterprise by developing workforce capacity in research administration. Many professionals enter the field without a clearly defined career pathway and receive little formal training through the career. This presentation offers both theoretical grounding and practical frameworks to intentionally cultivate career pipelines, support onboarding, and enhance long-term professional growth in the field. Value: Attendees will gain a research-informed yet highly practical framework for building scalable professional development programs. The case studies provide actionable insights, including implementation challenges, resource considerations, and measurable outcomes. By sharing ready-to-use, no-cost materials, the session equips institutions, particularly those with limited resources, to implement sustainable, experiential learning-based training programs that strengthen and diversify the future research administration workforce.

The 20th century management consultant, Peter Drucker wrote that “successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work and their values.” Many research administrators “fall” into research management and discover it both challenging and rewarding. However, career progression can seem haphazard. Professional development opportunities abound but often these do not necessarily lead to career advancement. The presenters, both recipients of SRAI’s Herbert B Chermside Lifetime Achievement Award, have had a long-standing interest in professional development being members of the SRAI task force that developed the highly successful LevelUP micro credentialing program and more recently, the SRAI professional development framework. During their combined extensive careers, they have recognised that professional development and career development are separate processes – sometimes linked, but not always. This talk will draw on lessons from their combined 60 years of experience and highlight the importance of sound decision-making, knowing when and how to pivot, and the considerations needed to steer successful career development. It will highlight some universal lessons applicable to anyone wishing to establish a career in research administration, including the importance of self-management. The talk will also outline the different mechanisms available to learn and develop at different stages of one's career.

In this presentation I will compare and contrast both the similarities and differences between capacity funding and competitive funding and will focus primarily on US Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). The presentation will be most relevant to land grant universities, schools of forestry, and schools of veterinary medicine. Research administrators are most familiar with competitive grants. NIFA awards competitive grants for fundamental and applied research, extension, and higher education activities, as well as for projects that integrate research, education, and Extension/outreach functions. Awards are made following a peer-review process. Capacity grants are intended for land-grant institutions, schools of forestry, and schools of veterinary medicine to fund research and extension activities. The amount of funds provided to each institution is determined by a formula, often statutorily defined, that may include variables such as the rural population, farm population, area of non-federal commercial forest land, timber harvest volume). Capacity grants typically require significant University cost matching. While both capacity and competitive grants are subject to the Uniform Guidance, the management techniques are very different. Applications for capacity grants are typically formula-driven as defined in the program legislation, while competitive grants typically require a budget and scope of work for a specific research project. The 2 funding mechanisms utilize different USDA management systems both at the proposal submission and throughout the post award life cycle.

Horizon Europe is the EU’s flagship R&I programme and remains structurally open to international cooperation, but the rules of participation and funding differ sharply depending on whether a country is EU, Associated, or non-associated—and those conditions evolve as association negotiations and agreements progress. Aligned with SRAI’s theme “Riding the Tides of Opportunity,” this session helps research administrators and institutional leaders spot the right funding routes and build collaboration strategies that match the Association Policy reality, from full association to complementary funding mechanisms and topic-specific restrictions, co-funding mechanisms, and ad hoc instruments. Participants will leave with a practical “route map” for: Where opportunities sit in Horizon Europe (Pillars, Missions, Partnerships, etc.) and how international participation works in practice, from investigator-driven (everybody from everywhere in the world can participate) to collaborative research (different rules apply to participants depending on where they are). What Association changes (rights, conditions, and typical limitations), and what does it mean for proposal strategy and institutional planning. How to structure EU partnerships to succeed under shifting geopolitical and policy constraints (including when EU funding is possible, when co-funding is needed, and how to de-risk participation). 

Clinical research administrators are increasingly expected to manage both sponsored grants and industry-funded clinical trials, yet these funding mechanisms operate under fundamentally different financial models that carry distinct compliance risks, operational requirements, and administrative expectations. While many institutions rely on shared teams and systems to support both types of funding, misalignment between protocol-based clinical trial financial management and project-based grant financial management often leads to confusion, rework, and increased institutional risk. This session will explore the practical financial implications of these differences, with particular attention to where institutions most frequently experience breakdowns, including pre-award cost handling, patient-related versus ancillary cost identification, coverage analysis alignment, and site billing complexity. Drawing on real-world institutional experiences, this session will present a pragmatic finance playbook designed to help research administrators recognize key financial decision points throughout the research lifecycle. The discussion will highlight how governance structures, role clarity, and cross-functional coordination between research administration, finance, compliance, and clinical operations influence financial outcomes and regulatory compliance. Rather than focusing on institution-specific tools or systems, the session will emphasize transferable frameworks that attendees can adapt within their own organizational environments. Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how to design and support scalable financial workflows that promote compliance, transparency, and fiscal stewardship across both clinical trials and sponsored grants. By the end of the session, participants will be better equipped to identify risks earlier, align stakeholders more effectively, and support sustainable research operations that can respond to increasing complexity and volume.

No workplace or team is ever conflict free, but conflict should not be at the heart of a workplace’s culture, nor should it result in chronically dysfunctional teams or work cultures. Even though everyone’s natural instinct is to avoid conflict, such avoidance is not productive in the long run and typically leads to toxic work relationships and culture. When teams understand and address their own sources of conflict, then they are much better equipped for supporting their customers, the researchers. This session will review the most recent science and research about intragroup conflict, as well as how it develops in the workplace and within teams, providing clear, step-by-step explanations for the most common sources of conflict and its interrelationship with workplace culture. Drawing on the most typical sources of conflict, attendees will then be introduced to strategies for dealing with conflict and dysfunctional teams along with approaches for turning conflict into opportunities for growth, learning, and improved workplace cultures. This review is intended to give attendees an awareness of how the actions of leaders and team members result in conflict and to empower team members with the knowledge of how to move teams away from conflict and towards functionality and productive work cultures.

Research happens across borders, institutions, and disciplines. A principal investigator in Tokyo works with a team in Dallas. A sponsor in Warsaw funds research at multiple universities. These collaborations rely on contracts that must be understood by administrators, researchers, and sponsors with different legal systems, professional backgrounds, and levels of English proficiency. Many research contracts are written in dense, abstract language that slows negotiation, creates misunderstandings, and increases institutional risk. For example, writing "the agreement shall be deemed terminated" instead of "X can terminate this agreement" adds complexity without adding protection. This session shows how plain language drafting and contract design techniques can make research contracts easier to understand, faster to negotiate, and easier to follow in practice. Plain language does not weaken legal protection; it uses active voice, concrete verbs, and a reader-centered structure so obligations and rights are clear. Design techniques, such as descriptive headings, tables, and visual structure, help readers locate critical information quickly without searching through dense text. Participants will review real research contract clauses and work through before-and-after examples to see how small drafting and formatting changes improve clarity. They will learn practical techniques they can apply immediately to make research contracts clearer, reduce negotiation friction, and support global research collaborations. Aligned with the conference theme "Riding the Tides of Opportunity", this session positions contracts as practical tools that support efficient and inclusive global research collaboration.

Research administrators frequently budget faculty salary based on effort or person-months, yet helping faculty determine the amount of time they genuinely need to fulfill project commitments can be surprisingly complex. Faculty workloads vary widely across institutions—and sometimes even across colleges within the same institution—leading to multiple interpretations of what constitutes “effort,” “release time,” and “course buyouts.” These differences can create confusion for faculty, departments, and research administrators as they attempt to align sponsored project expectations with institutional workload policies. This discussion-based session will provide participants with an opportunity to explore how institutions define and manage faculty workload in relation to externally funded research, scholarship, and creative or artistic activities. Attendees will be invited to share their own institutional policies and practices related to workload distribution, calculation of release time, and implementation of course buyouts. By learning from peers, participants can compare approaches, identify common challenges, and gather new ideas for improving clarity and consistency in their own environments. The discussion lead will also present examples from their institution’s efforts to develop and standardize workload policies and effort-planning practices across colleges. These examples will highlight strategies for supporting faculty success, encouraging research growth, and ensuring that sponsored project commitments are matched with appropriate and realistic allocations of time.

Compliance is central to the work of Research Administration, and in recent years has become even more important. As the research administrators for our institutions, it falls on all of us to ensure we are staying compliant to the highest degree. Being out of compliance can cause funding issues, audit risks, and reflects poorly on not only the PI, but the institution as a whole. While compliance is incredibly important, not every grant requires the same level of oversight or scrutiny. Managing a small grant for a PhD student has different requirements than a large federal project, say an R01 through NIH, and we plan to dive into the tricks and tools our college uses to stay on top of our grants, no matter the funding amount. Staying compliant requires not only us as administrators to be on top of things, but also requires a level of collaboration with everyone else involved, from the PI down to students. This session will focus on how to build a proactive atmosphere of compliance within your institution—from small, internal undergraduate research all the way to multi-year federal projects.. Drawing from the experience of a large Research Office at an R1 institution, the session will outline the building blocks for collaborative change and compliance with provided examples and tools for creating a roadmap for your own institutional change.

Driven by renewed federal, institutional, and private-sector emphasis on workforce development, preparation pathways for careers in research administration are undergoing a critical evolution. While research development, sponsored programs, compliance, financial management, and technology transfer professionals have long benefited from robust training and professional development opportunities, these efforts have traditionally targeted individuals already employed in research administration roles. Increasingly, institutions are recognizing the need to introduce structured, academic preparation earlier in the pipeline. Through the GRANTED initiative, the National Science Foundation identified a national gap in workforce readiness and funded Filling the Gap: Establishing an Undergraduate Program in Research Administration and Management to address this need. This multi-institutional initiative, developed in collaboration with the Society of Research Administrators International, supports the creation of credit-bearing undergraduate and graduate academic programs—including minors, certificates, and concentrations—designed to prepare students for entry-level and early-career roles in research administration. This session will describe the development of the Research Administration and Management (RAM) curriculum, including its academic structure, modular design, and alignment with professional competencies across the research enterprise. Presenters will highlight how institutions have implemented RAM programs in diverse academic contexts, share examples of successful adoption strategies, and discuss common challenges related to curriculum approval, faculty engagement, and institutional readiness. The session will conclude with reflections on lessons learned and opportunities for scaling academic pathways that strengthen and diversify the future research administration workforce.

Research administrators must interpret complex federal, state, and institutional regulations on an ongoing basis. Critical thinking helps to evaluate the relevance of specific rules to unique project regulations, resolve apparent contradictions in policy or guidance, and make informed decisions when guidance is ambiguous. This critical thinking session will equip participants with tools to analyze information objectively, overcome cognitive biases, and make sound evidence-based decisions. Through structured hands-on activities, attendees learn to question assumptions, evaluate arguments, and apply deductive or inductive reasoning to solve complex problems effectively, as well as help research administrators tackle complex, real-world challenges with clarity and confidence. This session is indeed for intermediate professionals to move beyond policy memorization to strategic, compliant, and confident decision-making. It addresses complex, gray-area scenarios in research administration, such as compliance, ethical dilemmas, and institutional risk management. Attendees will obtain a basic foundation of what critical thinking is and how it to apply in research administration. This session will help to build a flexible, real-world problem-solving framework that can be applied immediately. This session is intended for an intermediate audience with 5+ years of experience in research administration, with an eye to gaining skills to dealing with complex situations via a critical thinking prism.

Leveraging lessons learned over a decade of research administration, this session shares what is working and what has failed in building an innovation ecosystem connected to university research, diverse sponsor interests, and market needs. We begin with the story of a small state institution in the U.S. northern Great Plains region. It boasts one major spinoff success that has hired dozens of employees, followed by a series of frustrating false starts on building a campus infrastructure capable of encouraging similar wins. Rogue faculty and community partners, a cantankerous funder with millions in assets to offer, and competing internal interests slowed the progress of a community otherwise willing and apparently able to move forward together. The successes and failures of this specific context will set the table for a lively discussion to follow. These are lessons about efficient institutional capacity-building, which must be adaptive and responsive to evolving funding landscapes and commercial market realities. Experiments with staffing, university committees, and partnership-building all inform an ongoing narrative of trial and error featuring some notable wins and some instructive setbacks. Ultimately, cultivating innovation is an area of research development that requires curiosity, risk tolerance, and both investigators and partners willing to break new ground together.

This session is the intervention pre-award and post-award teams desperately need, examining how proposal decisions made in the heat of deadline panic create downstream disasters. We'll work through the hall of fame of "seemed like a good idea at the time" decisions: Principal Investigators budgeted at 40% effort when they're already managing three other grants at 30% each (math is hard), a full year of salary for a to-be-hired position that take nine months to hire, $75K consultants with budget justifications that just say "consultant," subaward documents that “will be requested later" but never materialize, salary budgets frozen in time ignoring union-mandated increases, cost-sharing mentioned casually on page 47 that post-award discovers during the first audit, student stipends budgeted using a payment mechanism your institution discontinued in 2019, participant incentives that your IRB immediately rejects, and excessive conference travel costs budgeted after your institution’s leadership froze all non-essential travel. But this isn't just venting, think of this as marriage counseling: we'll transform these painful lessons into actionable solutions through communication protocols, pre-award information sheets, collaborative review processes, and feedback loops that actually work. It's cheaper than couples therapy and can transform what used to be a rocky relationship into a rock-solid partnership.

The global research funding landscape is undergoing a transformation that requires a thoughtful shift in institutional strategy. As hospitals and health systems grapple with tightening margins and rising operational costs, the traditional cost center model for research is being challenged by executive leadership. Today, research directors and academic leaders are no longer just stewards of scientific discovery; they are increasingly tasked with justifying their programs' economic existence to protect current investments and secure the capital necessary for future growth. Relying solely on the predictable yet limited cycles of federal grant funding is no longer a viable long-term strategy. To remain resilient in a volatile economy, forward-thinking organizations must differentiate themselves by adopting a sophisticated portfolio approach to revenue. This involves looking beyond public funds toward venture-like investments, intellectual property monetization, and strategic private donor partnerships that align with long-term institutional goals. To successfully win over skeptical internal C-suite executives and discerning external stakeholders, a clear, quantifiable Return on Investment (ROI) story is no longer optional, it is a prerequisite for institutional survival. However, a significant gap remains between the need for financial transparency and the current capabilities of most research offices. Many organizations lack the robust data infrastructure required to track ROI effectively, particularly when it comes to balancing direct financial returns with the more complex, downstream impact on clinical patient outcomes and broader community health. This deep-dive session addresses these gaps by providing a comprehensive framework for tracking and socializing the multi-dimensional value of research. We will explore how to build the necessary measurement infrastructure and translate complex data into a compelling narrative that transforms the research department from a budgetary line item into a strategic driver of institutional innovation and financial health.

Mentorship has consistently been shown to be a critical component in helping employees succeed, build confidence, and grow as individuals and professionals. Through mentorship, employees gain access to institutional knowledge, practical guidance, and trusted relationships that support learning, problem-solving, and career development. These connections help individuals navigate complex environments, develop new competencies, and feel more engaged in their work. This session will explore how and why mentorship is not only valuable at the individual level, but also a key building block for creating and sustaining a successful research administration training program. Participants will examine the role mentorship plays in strengthening onboarding, supporting continuous learning, and promoting consistency in processes and decision-making. The discussion will also highlight ways to intentionally integrate mentorship into training structures, align mentors and mentees effectively, and cultivate a culture of shared responsibility for learning and development.

In alignment with the SRAI annual meeting theme E Ho’omau—perseverance and sustained forward movement, this session provides research administrators with a comprehensive and practical understanding of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) Survey, one of the most critical national data collections for measuring university research activity. Institutions rely on HERD results to benchmark themselves, communicate research investment to stakeholders, and support strategic planning—but the process of gathering accurate data across campus can be complex and resource-intensive. This session breaks down the HERD Survey’s structure, definitions, and data elements, offering clarity on what is required and why it matters. Attendees will gain insight into the primary sources of HERD data—including sponsored projects, institutional finance systems, internal cost allocations, and research personnel information—and learn strategies for coordinating these sources effectively. The session will highlight common challenges institutions face, best practices for validating data, and approaches for building repeatable processes that improve accuracy and reduce administrative burden. Participants will also explore how HERD data can be used beyond survey submission, transforming mandatory reporting into meaningful institutional intelligence. Whether new to HERD or seeking to refine current practices, this session provides a foundation to navigate HERD reporting with confidence, accuracy, and purpose.

Effort reporting is often viewed as a compliance checkpoint—an administrative task completed at the end of a certification cycle. However, reporting is simply the outcome of a much larger and more critical process: effort management. When institutions focus primarily on the certification form rather than the systems and decisions that shape it, they increase audit risk, financial exposure, and operational strain. It's so often confused and effort is 80% of most budgets. Once you understand effort, you will understand research administration. Managing effort involves ongoing oversight of commitments, salary allocations, cost share requirements, and payroll alignment throughout the lifecycle of an award. It requires proactive communication with faculty, timely adjustments to distributions, and clear documentation that reflects actual work performed. Effort reporting, by contrast, is the after-the-fact confirmation that these management practices were handled correctly. This session reframes effort compliance from a reactive reporting exercise to a strategic management responsibility. Participants will examine common breakdowns that occur when effort is not actively monitored, including late cost transfers, over-commitments, salary cap issues, and certification delays. Through practical examples and actionable strategies, attendees will learn how strengthening effort management processes can reduce findings, support faculty success, and protect institutional credibility long before the certification form is signed.

Change is never easy. Whether it’s downsizing a house filled with decades of memories or adapting to new processes and priorities in the workplace, it often requires us to confront discomfort, uncertainty, and emotional attachments. In this talk, we’ll share a deeply personal story about helping aging parents transition out of the home they’ve owned for over 30 years as they prepare to embrace the next phase of retirement. This experience highlighted the challenges of navigating sentimental attachments to belongings, from treasured heirlooms to more peculiar accumulations like eight measuring cups, countless takeout containers, and an extraordinary collection of rubber bands. As we worked through the process of decluttering and downsizing, we uncovered valuable insights about how we approach change, not just in our personal lives but in our professional environments as well. Using this story as a metaphor, we’ll examine the emotional and practical challenges of letting go, the power of streamlining for clarity and efficiency, and how to identify and manage resistance to change. Whether it’s reducing clutter at home or adapting to shifts in research administration, embracing change can pave the way for growth, transformation, and new opportunities. By the end of this talk, we hope you’ll feel inspired to reflect on what you’re holding onto (both physically and mentally) and consider how letting go might open doors to a brighter, more purposeful future. Change may be difficult, but it can also be a powerful catalyst for moving forward with intention and possibility.

Emerging scholarship on playful work design demonstrates that intentionally infusing play into the workplace can meaningfully enhance engagement, creativity, and well-being. This growing body of research highlights how play—when treated as a deliberate, skillful practice rather than a distraction—can create the psychological conditions that help employees sustain motivation and navigate complex or demanding tasks with greater agility. This presentation explores how principles from the science of play can be engineered to transform research administration into a more adaptive, innovative, and human-centered practice, drawing on peer-reviewed studies showing that playful work design fosters intrinsic motivation, high-performance focus, and problem-solving. Building on this evidence, the session will illustrate how play supports cognitive flexibility, encourages experimentation, and buffers against the chronic stressors inherent in research support roles. Participants will learn how small, self-initiated behaviors—such as reframing tasks as challenges, incorporating moments of levity, or redesigning workflows to invite curiosity—can improve energy, focus, and performance without compromising accuracy or compliance. These micro-practices illustrate how playful work design functions as a form of proactive job crafting that aligns personal strengths, regulatory demands, and institutional goals. By merging research on play, job crafting, and thriving at work, this session presents a framework for cultivating resilient, high-performing research administration teams. Attendees will leave with strategies to engineer play-informed practices that support creativity, reduce burnout, and elevate the research enterprise through a more joyful and engaged workforce. In doing so, the session underscores the practical, evidence-based value of integrating play into complex professional environments.

Institutions of higher education face increasing expectations to demonstrate compliance with United States export control regulations as part of broader research security requirements. Although many universities mandate export control training, limited empirical evidence exists regarding which employee groups most effectively understand and apply this knowledge. As a result, institutions often rely on standardized training approaches that may not adequately address areas of greatest compliance risk. This session presents findings from a quantitative study examining predictors of export control awareness among 196 employees at public universities in Texas who completed required training. Using binary logistic regression, the study assessed whether employee experience factors influenced awareness across core export control concepts, including the fundamental research exclusion, identification of compliance red flags, definitions of exports and foreign persons, and consequences of non-compliance. Results indicate that primary employment type is a significant predictor of knowledge, with faculty demonstrating lower awareness of the fundamental research exclusion than staff. Given faculty members’ central role in research design and international collaboration, these gaps present meaningful institutional risk. The session situates these findings within the regulatory and research security landscape and introduces organizational learning theory as a framework for understanding how compliance knowledge is acquired and sustained within institutions. Emphasis is placed on translating research results into practical strategies that strengthen training effectiveness, target higher-risk populations, and better align education efforts with institutional research activity. Designed for research administrators, export control and research compliance professionals, sponsored programs staff, institutional leaders, and faculty with oversight responsibilities, the session combines data-driven insights with applied discussion. Participants will reflect on their current training models, compare practices with peers, and identify opportunities to improve program design. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how export control awareness varies across roles and with evidence-based strategies to evaluate existing programs, address knowledge gaps, and implement targeted approaches that enhance compliance while supporting the academic research mission.

Research programs often grow in study volume and protocol complexity without a consistent way to measure capacity. As a result, workload discussions become subjective (“we’re overwhelmed”), and strain shows up later as delayed start-up timelines, documentation backlogs, increased deviations, and turnover. This step-by-step session translates published workload approaches used in clinical research operations into a practical method research administrators can implement immediately. We will briefly synthesize what the literature shows about measuring research workload, including protocol complexity scoring and structured workload assessment tools, and how these approaches have been used to estimate effort across roles and study phases. Participants will learn how to compare approaches, select a method that fits their environment, and build a simple workload index (complexity-weighted studies per FTE) using data they already track (study counts, study phase, and key complexity drivers). The session then walks through how to interpret results using a capacity spectrum to identify early operational risk signals (cycle-time slippage, missed documentation, inconsistent billing capture, and burnout risk) and choose targeted interventions such as prioritization rules, workflow redesign, role clarification, and evidence-informed staffing justification. Attendees will leave with a one-page toolkit: a literature-based overview of workload methods, a basic template to calculate the index, and an implementation checklist to pilot the approach in their own program.

As artificial intelligence tools become embedded across the research lifecycle, institutions face legal questions that often outpace formal policy and regulatory guidance. Research administrators are increasingly asked to evaluate proposals, agreements, and collaborations involving AI-enabled methodologies where ownership, accountability, data rights, and compliance obligations may be unclear. In these moments, the absence of explicit rules does not eliminate institutional risk—it shifts interpretive responsibility to the professionals reviewing and supporting the work. This session equips research administrators with a practical framework for exercising legal judgment when managing AI-affected sponsored projects. Rather than focusing solely on emerging technologies, the presentation emphasizes defensible decision-making: how to identify legal unknowns, evaluate institutional exposure, determine when escalation is necessary, and document rationale to support consistent and risk-aware outcomes. Participants will explore high-risk scenarios including AI-assisted discovery, proprietary dataset use, vendor-provided tools, evolving inventorship questions, and contractual provisions that may quietly alter ownership or publication rights. Through structured examples, attendees will learn how to move beyond checklist compliance toward reasoned professional judgment that aligns with institutional risk tolerance and research integrity. Designed for administrators seeking deeper engagement with research law principles, this session provides actionable strategies that can be implemented immediately—from refining intake questions to recognizing escalation triggers and strengthening cross-campus collaboration. Attendees will leave better prepared to make informed, defensible decisions in environments where policy is still emerging but institutional responsibility remains constant.

Sponsored Research Offices around the world are facing growing pressure to accelerate proposal submissions, reduce administrative burden, and accommodate last-minute requests, all while continuing to safeguard their institutions from compliance, financial, and reputational risks. In many environments, the increasingly common “just submit it” mindset has created tension between speed and proper institutional oversight. When submission readiness is not clearly defined or consistently enforced, institutions may unknowingly assume avoidable risk, and Sponsored Research Offices can find themselves in a reactive “submission rescue” role rather than operating as strategic partners. This session examines how these pressures are affecting research administration globally and highlights common operational pain points, including compressed internal timelines, frequent exception requests, and unclear ownership of risk across stakeholders. Drawing on practical institutional experience, the session will explore how informal practices can gradually erode governance and create hidden exposure if not addressed through clear, consistent processes. Participants will gain practical, easy-to-implement strategies to strengthen submission readiness without creating unnecessary burden for researchers. The discussion will focus on establishing defensible internal deadlines, introducing minimum submission requirements, and clarifying roles and responsibilities in the proposal process. By the end of the session, attendees will be better equipped to position the Sponsored Research Office as both a responsive service partner and a proactive steward of institutional risk. This topic is highly relevant to research administrators worldwide navigating increasingly complex and high-volume funding environments.

As research enterprises expand in scale and complexity, the demand for skilled research administrators has never been greater. However, many institutions struggle to fill key roles and to retain talented staff once they are hired. This interactive session will explore the full arc of the talent pipeline, from proactive outreach to students and recent graduates to mid-career professionals who are seeking opportunities in a new field. Additionally, this session will discuss succession planning and retention strategies that foster engagement and professional growth among seasoned research administrators. Drawing from lessons learned, the presenters will describe strategies that have been successful and discuss what opportunities remain underutilized in the effort to build a sustainable workforce. Discussion topics will include targeted recruitment strategies for robust candidate pools, the role of the work environment and institutional culture in retention and succession planning, as well as related pathways for career development and specialization within research administration given an era of increasingly complex sponsored research portfolios. Attendees will leave with concrete, actionable strategies they can adapt and implement within their own institutional contexts. In addition, attendees will gain a broader perspective on how the field as a whole can invest in its next wave of research administration professionals to ensure the continued growth and excellence of the research enterprise. 

This session will engage attendees in a conversation about how the intentional development of leadership skills for researchers and research administrators can contribute to building and sustaining a culture of integrity in research labs, teams and administrative offices. Participants will examine how everyday leadership behaviors shape research climate, influence team norms, and affect ethical decision-making across the research lifecycle. This session will provide attendees with practical skills and resources for self-leadership and leading others, including team management, effective communication, conflict resolution, and decision-making in research environments. Participants will also deepen their understanding of how these leadership competencies can contribute to responsible and ethical research. Through facilitated discussion, applied examples, and structured reflection, attendees will explore common challenges that arise in research settings, including but not limited to ambiguity in role responsibilities and competing priorities. The session will emphasize practical strategies that can be adapted to a variety of institutional contexts and research environments. Participants will leave with concrete approaches for integrating leadership development into research oversight, mentorship, and team management practices in ways that reinforce accountability, transparency, and shared responsibility for research integrity.

Research administration and research projects increasingly require coordination across people, timelines, and institutional processes, yet many research organizations continue to manage this work informally or reactively. As research portfolios grow in size, scope, and complexity, the need for more intentional and repeatable approaches to planning, execution, and communication becomes critical to sustaining effective research operations. This session introduces core project management fundamentals and demonstrates how they can be applied to strengthen research operations within the research office and across the full research lifecycle, from early planning through project closeout. Using practical examples drawn from academic research environments, the session highlights techniques for defining scope, engaging stakeholders, managing risk, and tracking progress in ways that align with the culture, governance structures, and constraints of higher education. The session is designed for research administrators responsible for coordinating work across teams, systems, and functional boundaries. In addition to operational practices, the session will provide an overview of professional development pathways in project management, including opportunities to build transferable skills, engage with global project management communities, and pursue certifications such as those offered by the Project Management Institute. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how project management skills can improve day-to-day research operations while also supporting long-term professional growth and career advancement.

Research administration is undergoing a significant transformation as institutions respond to increasing regulatory complexity, evolving sponsor expectations, rapid technological advancement, and growing demands for research impact and accountability. Traditionally viewed as a compliance- and transaction-focused function, research administration is now emerging as a strategic partner in advancing institutional research missions, fostering team science, and supporting sustainable research ecosystems. Research administration is no longer a world of siloes. This session will explore key emerging trends shaping the future of research administration, including the integration of automation and artificial intelligence, the expansion of cross-functional team science models, the use of data-driven decision-making tools, and the growing emphasis on workforce development and leadership pipelines. Through real-world case studies from Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs and large, multi-site research programs, participants will gain practical insight into how these trends are being implemented successfully across diverse institutional environments. Attendees will learn how automation tools can streamline high-volume administrative processes such as RPPR preparation and compliance tracking, how collaborative models can improve efficiency and investigator support, and how dashboards and metrics can strengthen leadership reporting and demonstrate research impact. The session will also highlight strategies for building future-ready research administration teams through mentorship, skills-based training, and career pathway development.

This session will be organized as a panel discussion that brings together professionals who support research from different roles within an institution. The goal is to have an open conversation about the challenges researchers and administrators face when preparing grant proposals and managing the requirements that come with sponsored funding. Panelists will share real examples from their work to show how administrative processes, policies, and expectations can affect researchers’ time, productivity, and ability to focus on their research. The discussion will be guided by questions to help keep the conversation focused on common issues, such as where administrative tasks create obstacles, how institutions decide what processes are necessary, and how staffing and resources are used to support researchers. Panelists will also talk about how their institutions try to balance meeting sponsor requirements while reducing unnecessary burden on faculty and staff. Audience participation will be encouraged through a question-and-answer portion of the session, giving attendees the chance to compare their own experiences with those shared by the panelists. This format allows participants to learn from different perspectives and take away ideas that may be useful in their own organizations. 

Research administration leaders are often promoted because of deep technical expertise, only to discover that success in the role depends less on doing the work themselves and more on leading people, aligning stakeholders, and creating consistency across complex, decentralized environments. In a field where funding, compliance, deadlines, and institutional reputation are always on the line, leaders need practical tools to guide teams, clarify expectations, and drive execution under pressure. This interactive session is designed to help research administrators make the transition from technical expert to effective functional leader. Participants will learn concrete strategies for clarifying roles and decision rights, communicating with influence across faculty, departments, central offices, and compliance partners, and establishing operating cadences that improve coordination and follow-through. The session will also address how to coach performance, manage conflict productively, and strengthen accountability within and across teams. Through facilitated discussion and real-world scenarios, attendees will leave with a practical leadership toolkit they can immediately apply to reduce rework, improve service consistency, support stronger team dynamics, and build a more sustainable and engaged research administration function.

In a profession where research administration practices and requirements continually evolve, research administrators are expected to build their expertise and contribute in meaningful ways, even in institutions without formal career ladders or structured promotion pathways. Aligned with this year’s conference theme, E Ho'omau: Riding the Tides of Opportunity, this session explores how research administrators can navigate changing expectations and use opportunities for growth to build confidence and move forward in their careers. This session shares lessons learned from completing a rigorous internal promotion process within a large research administration office, focusing not on institution-specific materials or proprietary frameworks, but on strategies that can be applied in many settings to strengthen professional identity and support growth grounded in evidence. Presenters will discuss how documenting daily work revealed often-overlooked contributions, strengthened professional confidence, addressed imposter feelings, and clarified long-term career direction. Attendees will explore practical approaches for showing their accomplishments, translating internal milestones into résumé value, and using this documentation not only to reflect on past work but also to intentionally develop future skills and career goals. Participants will engage in brief guided reflection activities to identify personal growth priorities and actionable next steps. The session emphasizes adaptable practices that individuals and institutions can use to support clarity, confidence, long-term career development, and staff retention in research administration.

In a rapidly changing funding environment, institutions must strengthen internal systems that sustain growth beyond individual champions. This interactive presentation presents a proven faculty support and community-building model that strengthens proposal competitiveness, builds multidisciplinary teams, and institutionalizes research development infrastructure. Participants will gain replicable strategies and tools to advance institutional capacity building and develop resilience in responding to evolving funding landscapes. Rather than relying on isolated proposal efforts, this framework institutionalizes support through scaffolded timelines, multidisciplinary team formation, writing groups, faculty research slams that increase visibility and collaboration, and integrated student engagement within research teams. These strategies reengage faculty, distribute leadership, and create shared ownership of proposal development. Participants will explore a comprehensive Research Development Toolkit that includes proposal timelines, checklists, agency one-sheets, letter of support templates, and engagement strategies designed to increase proposal submission readiness and competitiveness. The model demonstrates how institutions can align faculty development, programmatic support, and cross-campus collaboration to secure foundation, corporate, and federal funding. Aligned with the Sponsored Programs Planning, Development, Deliveries track, emphasis on leading campus-wide teams and strengthening institutional programs, this session provides replicable, evidence-informed practices that build long-term institutional infrastructure. Attendees will leave with scalable strategies, assessment metrics, and implementation benchmarks that advance faculty engagement, community cohesion, and long-term institutional capacity.

Research risk often appears early in the lifecycle—during proposal intake, budget development, subrecipient planning, and sponsor communications—yet many institutions still experience research security as a late-stage compliance “gate.” When that happens, teams lose time, redo work, and deliver inconsistent decisions to principal investigators. Just as importantly, late discovery of risk can force institutions into rushed choices: accepting restrictive sponsor terms without fully understanding the implications, pausing negotiations to resolve questions that should have been identified earlier, or scrambling to add mitigations after expectations have already been set with the research team. This session provides a step-by-step shared operating model that clarifies how Sponsored Projects and Research Security work together from intake through award execution so that issues are surfaced early, routed to the right stakeholders, and resolved with clear decision authority. Participants will learn how to define decision rights across Sponsored Projects, Research Security, institutional counsel, information security, and other stakeholders; how to apply a risk-tiered triage that routes only the small subset of proposals needing enhanced review while preserving fast turnaround for routine submissions; and how to document decisions in a way that is defensible and consistent without adding unnecessary administrative burden. The presenters will use two realistic scenarios to demonstrate the model in action, including a situation where sponsor terms introduce restrictions that change risk posture and a situation where collaboration structures and subrecipient relationships create additional diligence needs. Attendees will leave with adaptable templates, including a decision-rights map, intake trigger questions, and a simple decision log that supports consistency, transparency, and stewardship while protecting cycle time and improving the researcher experience.

Research centers produce a wide range of scientific outcomes, yet many of these results remain confined to internal reporting structures or disciplinary communities. This interactive concurrent session invites research administrators to examine outreach not as a peripheral or optional activity, but as a strategic, accountable, and reportable function of research administration, particularly within publicly funded research environments. Using the IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience (QNS) as a case study, the session will engage participants in discussing how publicly funded research outcomes can be systematically translated into compliant, auditable, and mission-aligned outreach programs. Examples will include QNS flagship initiatives such as NanoKomik, an educational science comic program developed for students and educators, and a science–art competition designed to translate advanced quantum research into accessible visual narratives for the general public. These initiatives demonstrate how outreach can simultaneously communicate research impact, fulfill public accountability requirements, and return value to society beyond academic audiences. Through facilitated presentation with Q&A and practical examples, participants will explore how outreach activities can support accountability to funding agencies, compliance with public funding mandates, and transparent communication of taxpayer-supported research outcomes. The session will also highlight how QNS intentionally designs its outreach resources to be openly shared, allowing other research centers to reuse educational and outreach materials free of charge, provided appropriate QNS credit is given. Participants will leave with actionable perspectives on embedding outreach into administrative workflows, performance reporting, and institutional responsibility frameworks, while also gaining insight into how research centers can responsibly share outreach assets to amplify public benefit across research ecosystems.

From Resistance to Results: Leading Challenging Employees Effectively is a practical, leadership-focused session designed to support research administrators who are navigating performance, engagement, and behavioral challenges within complex and highly regulated research environments. Research administration teams operate under constant pressure from compliance requirements, tight timelines, evolving regulations, and frequent organizational change, all of which can contribute to employee resistance, disengagement, or disruptive behaviors. This session examines common drivers of these challenges, including unclear expectations, role overload, change fatigue, communication breakdowns, and misalignment with institutional priorities. Through discussion of real-world scenarios drawn from research administration settings, participants will explore how resistance can manifest and how leadership responses can either escalate or resolve these issues. The session emphasizes practical strategies for addressing challenges with clarity, consistency, and purpose, while maintaining professionalism and psychological safety. Participants will learn how to balance accountability with motivation, conduct effective and respectful difficult conversations, and reset expectations in ways that support both individual performance and team cohesion. By strengthening leadership skills and confidence, this session equips research administrators to reduce disruption, protect operational integrity, and foster resilient, high-functioning teams. Ultimately, the session highlights how effective people management is essential to advancing the administrative mission that enables high-quality, compliant, and sustainable research.

As research portfolios grow in size and complexity, institutions are increasingly moving toward shared services models to support post-award administration. When intentionally designed, these structures can enhance consistency, compliance, and scalability. However, without clearly defined roles and coordinated workflows, shared services can also create ambiguity around ownership, communication breakdowns, and diffuse accountability across faculty, finance, and grant administration teams. This session presents a case study of a school-level shared services model that redefined post-award support through clearly structured role delineation, standardized workflows, and intentional collaboration between grant administrators and fiscal officers. The model formalizes responsibilities across the lifecycle of an award — including intake, financial monitoring, reporting, effort coordination, and closeout — while positioning faculty as strategic partners rather than administrative intermediaries. Through the development of structured procedures and responsibility matrices, the model establishes grant administrators as leaders in documentation, compliance coordination, and sponsor reporting, while fiscal officers maintain ownership of financial oversight, projections, payroll allocation, and account monitoring. Regular intake meetings, quarterly portfolio reviews, and proactive reporting timelines create a shared accountability framework that reduces institutional risk and improves transparency. By strengthening local post-award infrastructure, the model complements central Sponsored Programs offices by building distributed expertise, enhancing continuity during periods of transition, and ensuring that faculty receive project-specific support from teams embedded within their academic environment. Participants will learn how a centralized, team-based approach can: Clarify “who does what” across post-award functions Improve communication between administrative units and investigators Strengthen compliance through consistent processes Support faculty through predictable, relationship-based service Scale operations without increasing administrative burden This session is especially valuable for schools and departments exploring shared services, restructuring post-award teams, or seeking to better align finance and grants functions within a collaborative operating model.

Artificial intelligence is no longer theoretical in research administration—it is already embedded in contract lifecycle management platforms, transcription and meeting-summary tools, clinical trial workflows, data abstraction processes, and even sponsor-drafted Clinical Trial Agreement (CTA) language. Despite this rapid integration, many institutions continue to approach AI reactively, addressing risks only after tools are adopted. This session reframes the conversation from “Should we allow AI?” to a more strategic question: “How do we govern AI responsibly while improving institutional performance and measurable outcomes?” Drawing on cross-institution advisory experience and firsthand implementation insights, this panel will explore how research organizations can design balanced, scalable AI governance frameworks. The goal is to protect data integrity, ensure regulatory compliance, and preserve sponsor trust—while still enabling innovation, efficiency, and long-term competitive advantage. Panelists will discuss the evolving AI landscape and highlight practical operational use cases across research administration and contracting workflows. The session will also address vendor oversight, data security expectations, and due diligence considerations. Finally, speakers will outline a practical, layered governance model that institutions can adapt to align leadership, legal, compliance, IT, and research operations around responsible, sustainable AI adoption. 

This session will explore common challenges, practical strategies, and effective approaches to managing grants from within an academic research department rather than a centralized grant office. With a strong emphasis on the needs of new department or division administrators, the session focuses on building foundational knowledge while also addressing the realities of working close with investigators and research teams. Participants will gain an understanding of why grant administration at the departmental level can differ significantly from central office operations, including variations in workflows, timelines, communication expectations, and compliance responsibilities. Regardless of whether an institution has a highly centralized research administration structure or a more decentralized model, there are unique considerations when supporting grant activity within a department. The session will cover key aspects of the grant lifecycle, including identifying and tracking funding opportunities, coordinating and supporting pre-award proposal development, and managing post-award activities such as budgeting, reporting, and ongoing compliance monitoring. Attention will be given to the role departments play in bridging investigators and central offices, ensuring accurate information flow and timely action. In addition, the session will highlight ways departmental administrators can provide sustained, value-added support to investigators throughout their research careers. This includes working effectively with trainees, fellows, staff, associates, and faculty researchers, anticipating needs, resolving issues early, and fostering an environment that supports successful and compliant research programs. The goal is to equip participants with practical insights and confidence to manage grants effectively within their local context.

We have all faced the moment of staring at a blank email, knowing we must inform a principal investigator that their request is unallowable or simply impossible—an exchange that feels fraught with risk no matter the response, as approving the request may introduce audit exposure while denying it can strain relationships and escalate conflict. Research administrators operate at the intersection of compliance and collaboration, charged with safeguarding institutional interests while also cultivating productive, respectful partnerships with investigators. This session reframes these difficult moments not as confrontations to be endured, but as opportunities for negotiation that can reduce tension and create constructive outcomes. By applying negotiation principles grounded in established business practices and informed by the lived experiences of the presenters, participants will develop a practical toolbelt of strategies to communicate boundaries clearly, manage emotional dynamics, and guide PIs toward compliant and feasible alternatives. Skill-building activities will draw from multiple frameworks, including Michael Wheeler’s, "The Art of Negotiation" and James Williams’ "How to Talk to Anyone About Anything," and will provide structured opportunities for attendees to practice identifying risks and opportunities in challenging PI scenarios, analyzing situations through an institutionally holistic lens, and articulating what is possible, what is likely, and what is unallowable. Through these exercises, participants will build confidence and agency in navigating high-stakes conversations with leadership, colleagues, and, most critically, their PIs, while gaining actionable communication techniques that promote compliance, protect the research enterprise, and sustain respectful, productive working relationships.

Research administrators and the Office of Sponsored Projects sit at the crossroads between investigators, institutional leadership, and sponsors, yet communication often breaks down at exactly the moments when clarity matters most. Fragmented messages, jargon-heavy guidance, and unclear expectations can delay submissions, frustrate faculty, and weaken institutional credibility with sponsors. This session focuses on practical communication strategies that help Office of Sponsored Projects professionals translate complex requirements into clear, usable guidance and position research for both impact and innovation. The deep dive uses real-world scenarios from the full research lifecycle, including early concept discussions, teaming and collaboration, budget development, compliance review, and award negotiation. Participants examine how messages travel across the ecosystem—from investigator to department, to the Office of Sponsored Projects, to central leadership and sponsors—and identify where misalignment or silence creates risk. Through guided exercises, they practice framing messages for different audiences, using plain language without losing necessary precision, and balancing risk management with a "yes-and" mindset that supports innovation. The deep dive blends short content segments with highly interactive activities such as role-play conversations, brief writing labs, and small-group redesign of common communications (for example: opportunity announcements, "red flag" emails, and sponsor clarifications). Participants also practice communicating constraints and difficult messages in ways that maintain trust, reinforce a shared sense of purpose, and support team morale. Participants leave with practical tools they can immediately apply, including communication templates, question checklists for intake conversations, and a simple mapping tool to align the right message, at the right time, to the right audience while modeling a constructive, solution-focused tone.

Practical understanding of basic contract law principles and their application in sponsored research. Whether you're a non-lawyer contracts officer or seasoned attorney longing for the days as a 1L, this webinar provides context to some of the terms and conditions in almost every research contract. Understand why they exist, the potential risks involved, and how to minimize them. This would not let me advance without a 200 word minimum. Contracts are built on words—but in sponsored research, those words carry institutional risk, compliance obligations, and financial consequences. This interactive session offers a practical, plain-language exploration of foundational contract law principles and how they show up in everyday research agreements. Designed for both non-lawyer research administrators and seasoned attorneys who appreciate a refresher on the fundamentals, the session demystifies the clauses that appear in nearly every sponsored project: indemnification, limitation of liability, intellectual property, confidentiality, publication rights, governing law, and more. Participants will gain insight into why these provisions exist, what interests they are designed to protect, and how they can shift risk between parties. Beyond definitions, the session focuses on application. Attendees will learn how to spot potential red flags, assess institutional exposure, and approach negotiations strategically and collaboratively. Real-world examples drawn from sponsored research contracting will provide context and practical takeaways that can be implemented immediately. Whether you review contracts daily or only occasionally encounter complex terms and conditions, this session will sharpen your instincts, strengthen your analysis, and reinforce the importance of precision in language—because in research contracting, the right words truly matter.

2025 has been a wild ride year for research! Starting in February 2025, leading with the National Institute of Health, several other agencies (i.e., Department of Energy, National Sciences Foundation and Department of Defense) proposed to cap the indirect cost rate at 15% which would result in a severe loss of reimbursement to research institutes and cripple US research endeavors. Lawsuits have resulted in temporary pauses for their implementation. In the meantime, the Joint Associations Group (JAG) has worked with the grant community to propose a brand-new model for charging research costs – the FAIR model (Financial Accountability in Research). Congress has expressed its support for the FAIR model in several of the 2026 Appropriation bills. However, a clear outcome is still pending on Congressional and OMB final actions. In addition, based on the Presidential directives in E.O. 14332, Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking (August 7, 2025), OMB plans to issue another round of revisions to the Uniform Guidance that will align better with this Administration’s priorities. The revisions will certainly further restrictions on indirect costs recovery. The wild ride continues in 2026! This session will highlight all the Government activities, including OMB’s proposed revisions, related to the changes in grant landscapes (particularly in the cost areas), and their impact on research administration at your institution. It will provide an update on the proposed JAG’s FAIR model and an outlook for the grant landscape in 2026.

Let's hit the pause button from working at top speed - and just ask a few questions: Am I ready to stop simply managing my career and start making a quantum leap forward? If you could fast-forward your career five years from now, what is the boldest, most ambitious professional impact you envision making? More importantly, what feels like the primary barrier standing in your way today? In the world of Research Administration, professional growth often feels incremental and linear. This dynamic session is designed specifically for Research Administration professionals who are eager to move beyond the status quo, unlock their true, untapped potential, and engineer a powerful strategy for their next pivotal move within the industry. We will help you how design a rigorous, data-driven roadmap for your career. Drawing on over 25 years of leadership and research administration experience together with a MS in Coaching, Doris Schultz leads you beyond traditional goal-setting. We will dive deep into an evidence-based, three-part framework—Assessment, Alignment, and Activation—to give you the clarity, technical insight, and actionable plan you need to redefine success on your own terms. This session isn't just theory. It is a “who am I” masterclass in blending data, adding skills and developing deep personal insight to engineer your unique quantum leap and accelerate your professional expression.

Many organization’s including Colleges and Universities, Hospitals and Non-Profits receiving direct federal awards are typically required to have a federally negotiated facilities and administrative (“F&A”) cost rate in order to receive reimbursement for indirect costs. For most people, however, the process of preparing, submitting, and negotiating the F&A rate proposal under the Uniform Guidance can appear overly technical and painfully detailed. This session is intended for anyone who is new to the F&A process or would simply like to better understand the basic requirements, inputs and objectives that make up this calculation. Discussion session will include a high-level perspective regarding how the regulations, financial and other data inputs, and submission and negotiation processes work together and will provide practical insight into the application of the F&A rate to the organization’s awards. The presentation will describe the current environment affecting organization’s indirect rates, including regulatory expectations and evolving compliance requirements that shape how organizations allocate and recover their administrative costs. It will also review proposed legislation that could alter allowable practices and documentation standards. By examining these potential changes, the session will explore how colleges and universities may need to adjust their budgeting, cost allocation methods, and long term planning to remain compliant and sustainable going forward in the years ahead as needed. Participants are encouraged to share their role in as well as their experience with the indirect rate process at their institution.

Sponsor terms and conditions are often accepted at face value—especially when awards are time-sensitive or issued under standard templates. Yet embedded within these agreements are clauses that can create significant institutional risk if not carefully reviewed and negotiated. This concurrent session will take a deep dive into the often-overlooked compliance implications hidden in sponsor terms and conditions and provide research administrators with a practical framework for proactive review. This session will focus on identifying and managing high-risk provisions commonly found in federal, state, industry, and foundation agreements. Participants will explore real-world examples of problematic clauses related to: Publication restrictions and prior review requirements Data ownership, access, and intellectual property rights Indemnification and liability language Export control obligations and foreign collaboration restrictions Mandatory cost sharing and matching requirements Sponsor prior approvals and expanded authority limitations Financial, technical, and subrecipient reporting obligations Through scenario-based discussion and case studies, attendees will learn how to distinguish between truly non-negotiable sponsor requirements and language that can—and should—be revised. The session will also provide guidance on how to escalate concerns appropriately and collaborate effectively with institutional partners in legal counsel, compliance, export controls, technology transfer, and sponsored programs. Special attention will be given to balancing risk mitigation with relationship management. Participants will gain strategies for communicating requested changes diplomatically, documenting institutional positions, and maintaining positive sponsor partnerships while protecting their organization’s regulatory and financial interests. Attendees will leave with: Red-flag indicators for high-risk terms Questions to ask during award review and negotiation Strategies for educating faculty about compliance implications Tools to streamline internal review workflows By the end of this session, participants will be better equipped to interpret complex award language with confidence, anticipate downstream compliance challenges, and safeguard their institutions from costly audit findings, repayment obligations, reputational harm, and regulatory penalties. This session will strengthen your ability to move beyond surface-level review and uncover the compliance traps that too often go unnoticed—until it is too late.

Mid-career research administrators constitute the largest and most strategically important segment of the workforce. In Canada, 47% of research administrators are in the mid-career stage (6–15 years) (Clark & Sharma, 2024), with global data similarly indicating that professionals aged 35–54 dominate the field (RAAAP Survey, 2023). Many of these professionals, based on their experience, capability and performance, advance into higher-level roles, often with little support or coaching. They face mounting challenges, including burnout from administrative overload, a lack of work-life balance, role ambiguity, insufficient recognition, and limited, unclear pathways for advancement. Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive, strategic approach to support sustained engagement and adaptability of these professionals in this rapidly evolving field. This session examines the unique strengths and challenges of the mid-career stage and offers suggestions and tips on targeted professional development, mentorship and coaching, and how others have structured their career paths and successfully rebalanced their workloads. Improving support for mid-career professionals can enhance retention, mitigate burnout, and strengthen institutional competitiveness in research.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping research administration—transforming how we draft proposals, assess compliance risk, allocate workload, forecast funding trends, and make strategic operational decisions across the research enterprise. From AI-assisted narrative development and data analytics to automated compliance reviews and decision-support dashboards, these tools are increasingly embedded in the daily work of research administrators. As AI becomes integrated into research operations, leaders must thoughtfully examine how technology influences team dynamics, authority, communication patterns, performance expectations, and inclusion. AI systems are built on data and design choices that may reflect existing inequities, and without careful oversight, they can unintentionally reinforce bias or privilege certain voices over others. This session explores how AI is reshaping leadership and decision-making within diverse research teams by examining the intersection of human bias and algorithmic bias, the risks of automation bias and over-reliance on AI-generated outputs, and the importance of maintaining transparency, accountability, and sound professional judgment. Participants will consider how to balance efficiency with equity, innovation with integrity, and data-driven insights with lived experience. The central question guiding this discussion is: How do we lead diverse teams responsibly in an AI-enabled research environment? Attendees will leave with practical strategies to integrate AI thoughtfully while preserving inclusion, critical thinking, and research excellence.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how research development offices discover funding, support proposal preparation, and manage the growing complexity of the sponsored programs landscape. But for most institutions, adopting AI is not as simple as purchasing a tool and rolling it out. Research development leaders must navigate questions of institutional fit, faculty trust, staff capacity, data governance, and the fundamental tension between off-the-shelf solutions and tools shaped by the people who actually use them. This panel brings together research development professionals from three institutions and a technology partner to share their firsthand experiences evaluating, adopting, and co-developing AI-powered tools for research administration. Panelists from the University of Memphis, Minot State University, and Denver Health and Hospital Authority will each describe the challenges that led them to explore new approaches, the criteria they used to evaluate available options, and what they learned through the process of integrating AI into their workflows. A member of the Atom Grants product team will offer a complementary perspective on how direct feedback from research administrators shapes the design and development of AI tools built for this community. The discussion will explore several questions central to the future of research development practice. How should an institution assess whether an AI tool is ready for its environment, and what does a meaningful evaluation process look like? What are the practical differences between purchasing a finished product, building something internally, and entering a collaborative development partnership with a technology provider? How do institutions of different sizes and resource levels approach these decisions differently? And how can research development offices use their domain expertise to influence the tools being built for them, rather than simply adapting to what the market offers? Attendees will hear concrete examples from each institution, including features that were requested, tested, and revised through real-world use, as well as candid reflections on what did not go as planned. The session will also address change management considerations, including how to build internal support for new technology among faculty, administrators, and leadership. This panel is designed for research administrators, research development professionals, and institutional leaders at any stage of evaluating or adopting AI-powered tools. Whether an attendee is just beginning to explore options or is already working with a technology partner, the session will provide a practical framework for making informed decisions and structuring productive partnerships. 

Research administrators operate in high-pressure environments shaped by regulatory complexity, tight deadlines, evolving federal requirements, and frequent interactions with investigators navigating compliance expectations. These stressors can activate a threat-based response that narrows perspective and undermines performance. This session introduces a practical, research-backed framework demonstrating how communication patterns, mindset framing, and positive psychology practices influence cognitive performance, accuracy, relationship-building, and stress recovery. Participants will learn how small, intentional shifts in daily communication and leadership behaviors can improve collaboration, problem-solving, service quality, and institutional trust without adding to workload. Designed for leaders, managers, and individual contributors, the session provides applicable tools to enhance clarity during challenging interactions, strengthen team dynamics, reduce burnout, and cultivate a more resilient and engaged research administration workforce. Participants will learn how small, intentional shifts in daily communication and leadership behaviors can improve collaboration, problem solving, service quality, and institutional trust without adding to workload. Through relatable examples, attendees will explore how mindset affects the way administrators interpret challenges, respond to escalating situations, and support stakeholders. Designed for leaders, managers, and individual contributors, the session emphasizes real world application and provides immediately applicable tools to enhance clarity during challenging interactions, strengthen team dynamics, reduce burnout, and cultivate a more resilient and engaged research administration workforce. Ultimately, participants will leave with strategies that support both professional sustainability and improved compliance outcomes, contributing to a stronger, more responsive research enterprise.

University–industry partnerships offer universities a way to expand their research capacity while giving industry access to academic expertise, talent, and long-term innovation pathways. These collaborations create opportunities that neither side could achieve alone, combining resources, specialized equipment, and complementary perspectives. When structured well, they accelerate discovery, diversify funding portfolios, and strengthen relationships that support sustained research growth. A range of engagement models shape how these partnerships function. Some begin with investigator-initiated projects driven by faculty expertise, while others rely on formal collaboration agreements or broader research framework and master agreements that streamline multi-year work. In-kind contributions—such as equipment or software loans—can enhance research infrastructure, and medical education grants support training and knowledge dissemination. Each model requires careful attention to regulatory and compliance considerations to ensure transparency, ethical conduct, and alignment with institutional policies. The impact of well-defined partnerships extends beyond individual projects. They often lead to influential publications, new workforce development pathways, and opportunities for technology transfer and commercialization. Students gain hands-on experience, patient outcomes can improve through applied research, and successful collaborations frequently position teams for future grant opportunities. As the landscape evolves, emerging trends—including the growing role of AI, multi-stakeholder collaborations, long-term competency building, and heightened expectations for societal impact—are reshaping how universities and industry work together to address complex challenges.

Medium and smaller research institutions often struggle with fragmented compliance tracking during proposal submission. Determining whether required training, such as human subjects' research or responsible conduct of research, has been completed, ensuring certifications are current, and securing documentation in time for submission can delay proposals and increase institutional risk. Manual tracking, last-minute email exchanges, and decentralized records frequently lead to human error and missed deadlines. This session presents a practical, in-house framework for embedding compliance verification directly into the proposal intake and submission lifecycle. Rather than relying on expensive external platforms, our institution developed an end-to-end proposal submission process that integrates compliance status as a foundational checkpoint. Training completion records are monitored in real time, automated notifications prompt investigators when certifications are expiring, and required documentation is requested well in advance of sponsor deadlines. Compliance is no longer an afterthought; it is structurally embedded in the workflow. As a result of this approach, proposal submissions are recorded and processed on time, faculty training documentation is proactively secured, and human error related to outdated or missing compliance certifications has been significantly reduced. The system increased transparency across research administration offices while maintaining flexibility tailored to institutional culture and faculty needs. This session will walk participants through the lifecycle model, governance considerations, process mapping, notification logic, and implementation steps required to build a scalable compliance-integrated intake framework using internal resources. Attendees will leave with practical tools to evaluate and strengthen their own research data and compliance lifecycle without necessarily investing in costly new technology.

Travel is one of the most common—and most frequently misunderstood—expense categories in sponsored projects; creating compliance risk for institutions navigating federal cost principles, sponsor-specific requirements, and institutional travel policies. Research administrators, principal investigators, and central office staff often encounter conflicting guidance, inconsistent documentation expectations, and high-stakes decisions when determining which travel costs are allowable, allocable, and properly documented. This session will provide a practical, step-by-step framework for evaluating travel on sponsored awards; guiding participants through key compliance principles and decision points that can be applied immediately in their own institutions. Using real-world case studies, audit findings, and examples drawn from over 20 years of institutional experience, attendees will analyze common high-risk scenarios including per diem versus actual lodging, international airfare compliance, missing agendas, personal travel, and the documentation of business purpose justifications. The session will emphasize interactive application of the framework through scenario exercises, group discussions, and decision-making practice, allowing participants to identify documentation gaps, evaluate appropriate corrective actions, and implement consistent processes. Participants will leave with actionable tools, checklists, and strategies for improving institutional travel practices, reducing audit risk, and ensuring responsible stewardship of sponsored funds, while also gaining confidence in translating complex regulatory guidance into practical day-to-day decision-making.

International research partnerships often stumble not over major strategic ambitions, but over the subtle assumptions we do not realise we are making. In this session, we reflect on the unexpected operational, cultural, and administrative challenges uncovered through INSPERation, a Brazil–Scotland collaboration aimed at strengthening research-management capacity and enabling equitable, secure international data-science work. The session highlights how differences in technical infrastructure, data-governance requirements, institutional processes, and even terminology can complicate what initially appears straightforward, creating friction that may go unnoticed until projects are underway. We discuss how jointly designed workshops, shared documentation practices, and a co-produced framework for partnership readiness are helping us navigate issues ranging from Trusted Research Environment alignment and due-diligence delays to contracting complexities, financial workflows, and cross-institutional communication barriers. By examining what was “lost in translation”—linguistically, administratively, and procedurally—we emphasise the vital role research managers play in building resilient systems that support fair and sustainable international collaboration. Participants will gain practical insights into how hidden barriers emerge, why they matter, and what tools and approaches can help create structures that make global research partnerships work effectively in real organisational contexts rather than only in principle, and deliver lasting impact across diverse research environments worldwide and beyond.

Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier or ORCID enables transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their contributions, and their affiliations by providing a unique, persistent identifier for individuals to use as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. These connections reduce administrative burden and save the time of the researchers and administrators through system interoperability and data exchange. ORCID provides an infrastructure to ensure proper organizational affiliations, properly credit research outputs, and improve visibility of the researchers and the organizations they are affiliated with. It also helps with meeting research integrity and grant compliance requirements as federal agencies including NIH and NSF, and other funders adopt ORCID as a persistent identifier for individuals into their grant submission and reporting processes. In this session, we will discuss how ORCID can benefit researchers as well as organizations in the research ecosystem especially as it relates to grant-funded research and research administration. We will also share applications of ORCID in the real world from research organizations to federal agencies. Finally, we will listen and learn from a state research university on how they are implementing ORCID and why they are leveraging ORCID at their organization. Attendees of this session will gain insights on the use of ORCID in research administration and in the entire research ecosystem.

Managing Center/Complex Projects: Effective Strategies for Multi-PI, Multi-Project, and Multi-Sponsor Research Programs is an in-depth session designed for research administrators, project managers, principal investigators, department chairs, and research leaders responsible for overseeing large, collaborative research initiatives. Center and complex awards, such as multi-project grants, cooperative agreements, and large-scale contracts, require a higher level of leadership, coordination, compliance oversight, and financial stewardship than traditional single-PI awards.This presentation provides a practical, lifecycle-based framework for successfully managing center-level programs. Participants will explore the five major phases of research administration, pre-award planning, award setup, post-award financial management, compliance and reporting, and closeout and renewal, through the lens of multi-PI, multi-institutional environments. Emphasis is placed on early planning, structured governance, defined roles and responsibilities, and the development of internal systems that support transparency and accountability. Key topics include managing complex budgets and cost sharing, overseeing multiple subawards, monitoring burn rates, ensuring compliance with federal and institutional policies, coordinating technical and financial reporting, preparing for audits and site visits, and sustaining long-term program success. The session also addresses common operational challenges,such as delayed subaward execution, budget overruns, data management concerns, and staff turnover,and provides actionable strategies to mitigate risk. Through real-world examples and practical tools, attendees will gain strategies to move from reactive problem-solving to proactive center management. By strengthening communication, documentation, and oversight systems, participants will be better equipped to support sponsor confidence, institutional priorities, and the long-term sustainability of complex research programs.

Research misconduct allegations can arise at any point in the lifecycle of a sponsored award and require institutions to respond in a timely, consistent, and compliant manner. This session will provide an in-depth overview of how research misconduct is defined, assessed, and addressed within the federal regulatory framework, with a particular focus on Public Health Service (PHS) requirements and regulatory updates that became applicable in 2026. Participants will be introduced to the federal research misconduct policy landscape, including the roles of key agencies such as the NIH and NSF, and the institutional responsibilities required to support research integrity. The session will walk through the three primary phases of a research misconduct proceeding—assessment, inquiry, and investigation—highlighting the purpose of each phase, key decision points, required documentation, and timeframes. Attendees will gain insight into the roles and responsibilities of institutional officials, including the Research Integrity Officer, investigation committees, and institutional leadership. Special attention will be given to the significant changes in the 2024 revisions to the PHS regulations, including updated definitions of intent, expanded reporting requirements, and clarified procedural expectations. Designed for research administrators, compliance professionals, and institutional leadership, this session will strengthen participants’ understanding of misconduct processes and promote effective, compliant responses across the award lifecycle.

Predominantly undergraduate emerging research institutions (ERIs) play a critical and growing role in the national research ecosystem, yet they face persistent challenges related to limited administrative capacity, evolving compliance requirements, and faculty expectations shaped by research-intensive norms. Research administrators in these environments must balance stewardship of scarce resources with meaningful faculty support, often while building infrastructure, culture, and trust simultaneously. Building upon the experience of Lehman College- City University of New York, and State University of New York-Cortland, this session will explore strategies for managing institutional resources while aligning faculty expectations with the realities and opportunities of ERIs. Presenters will examine common tension points such as proposal volume versus staffing capacity, pre- and post-award service boundaries, compliance responsibilities, and faculty workload, and share practical approaches for setting transparent service models, prioritizing support, and communicating institutional constraints without undermining faculty engagement. Through case examples and facilitated discussion, participants will reflect on how to right-size research administration services, support undergraduate-centered research missions, and position ERIs for sustainable growth. This session is designed for research administrators at all career stages working in predominantly undergraduate institutions, emerging research institutions, and decentralized or hybrid research administration environments. It will be particularly relevant for directors, managers, and professionals involved in capacity building, faculty engagement, and strategic planning. Attendees will leave with adaptable frameworks, communication strategies, and planning tools that can be applied across decentralized or hybrid administrative models common in PUIs and ERIs.

As Research Administrators, we build our professional networks every single day—whether we realize it or not. Every email exchange, in-person or virtual meeting, and collaboration presents an opportunity to connect, learn, and grow within our field. Yet for many, the idea of networking can feel uncomfortable, awkward, or even intimidating. For others, it’s exciting—a chance to meet new people, share ideas, and explore future possibilities. No matter where you fall on that spectrum, the ability to network effectively is one of the most powerful skills you can develop. Building strong, authentic connections not only enhances your professional reputation but also opens doors to new partnerships, career advancement, and fresh perspectives that can enrich your work and organization. With many of us attending events such as the SRAI Annual Meeting or other conferences throughout the year, now is the perfect time to strengthen your networking abilities. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to: • Start and sustain engaging conversations with confidence • Join group discussions naturally and effectively • Build genuine rapport with new contacts • Gracefully exit conversations while leaving a positive impression Join us to discover practical, confidence-building strategies that will help transform your next networking experience into a meaningful and enjoyable opportunity for professional growth.

Clinical trial agreements (CTAs) between two domestic parties can be complicated. When clinical trials cross international borders, that complication factor is compounded. Negotiating with international parties can be tricky and nuanced. Understanding negotiation tactics that work with multi-national parties can ease cultural tensions and reduce barriers created by cultural differences. Increasing familiarity with typical contractual language that appears in international CTAs will increase comfort during review and ease negotiation tensions. This session will explore the legal, operational, and strategic complexities of contracting CTAs across borders in today’s global research landscape. This presentation breaks down the end-to-end contracting process—from sponsor and CRO agreements to site, vendor, and investigator contracts—highlighting how local laws, regulatory expectations, and cultural norms can shape timelines and risk. Attendees will gain practical insights into common challenges such as aligning global templates with country-specific requirements, managing data protection and IP across jurisdictions, and negotiating efficiently without compromising compliance. Through real-world examples and best practices, the session will equip clinical research professionals with tools to streamline negotiations, reduce delays, and build contracts that support successful multi-national trial execution. This advanced session will focus on the specifics of negotiating CTA-specific agreements across international borders and provide details about specific clauses that may be present in international agreements.

This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of NIH prior approval requirements. It covers when approvals are required, how requests should be submitted, and the common triggers that can affect awards. Understanding these requirements is essential for research administrators, institutional leadership, and scientists to ensure compliance and avoid unnecessary delays. The session is designed to clarify roles and responsibilities in the prior approval process, providing practical guidance to support timely and effective management of NIH awards. Participants will learn how to recognize situations that require prior approval, the proper channels for submission, and strategies to mitigate risks associated with non-compliance. Emphasis will be placed on common pitfalls and challenges that institutions may encounter, helping attendees anticipate and address potential issues before they impact research activities or funding. By the end of this presentation, research administrators and scientific staff will have a clearer understanding of the procedures, timelines, and documentation required for NIH approvals. The intent is to help grant recipients across the research teams and to understand their roles and responsibilities. The session aims to foster collaboration among institutional leadership, administrators, and scientists and NIH staff to ensure that award management is conducted smoothly, efficiently, and in alignment with NIH policies and federal regulations.

Guided by the theme E Ho‘omau, which calls on us to persevere and move forward with resilience and purpose, this session examines how trust-based operational leadership can fortify research infrastructure and sustain continuity amid shifting policies, funding pressures, and organizational transformation. Drawing on principles from Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last, the session explores how servant leadership and the Circle of Safety framework can cultivate environments where collaboration, transparency, and shared responsibility thrive across research operations. Research operations depend on coordinated leadership spanning finance, human resources, compliance, information technology, facilities, and academic units. When these areas work in alignment, institutions are better positioned to navigate uncertainty and maintain momentum in their research missions. To ground these concepts in practice, the session will present real-world scenarios that highlight common operational challenges, such as adapting to regulatory changes during staffing shortages, resolving cross-unit tensions during major system implementations, and sustaining research continuity during unexpected disruptions. Facilitated audience discussion will encourage participants to reflect on how these scenarios mirror their own institutional contexts and to identify opportunities to strengthen trust, communication, and cross-functional problem-solving. The session will conclude with practical strategies for integrating servant leadership principles into operational planning, infrastructure development, and organizational change initiatives. By adopting these approaches, research administrators can more effectively support faculty, steward institutional resources, and uphold research excellence during periods of uncertainty and transformation.

Institutional research strategies are often shaped by external forces—yet their success depends on how effectively they are interpreted, operationalized, and sustained within academic institutions. Research administrators play a critical role in this continuum, serving as translators, facilitators, and implementers who connect high-level strategy to day-to-day research operations. This topic is particularly relevant today in light of the global geopolitical forces which are impacting higher education and research. This interactive session explores how research administrators can actively inform and shape strategic planning processes. The session, led by highly experienced research development practitioners from the U.S. and Canada, will highlight planning concepts, their application in various research settings, and transferable practices. The session will examine how federal or national priorities cascade to institutions and, ultimately, to administrators who must reframe strategy into actionable guidance—through funding opportunity alignment, coaching on language and framing, and enabling institutional agility in a rapidly changing research environment. Participants will work in small groups to identify high impact engagement strategies and explore effective approaches for communicating strategy so individuals understand their role in advancing it. The session will also feature live facilitation exercises, small group engagement, and modeling best practices for engaging faculty and administrators in planning conversations. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies they can apply immediately to strengthen planning, implementation, and alignment within their research enterprises.

This session will provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of NIH R01 funding opportunities—highlighting key differences between R01s and other NIH mechanisms—and will address the critical administrative and compliance issues that research administrators must navigate to support competitive proposal development. Through a practical, process-focused approach, attendees will learn how to analyze RFPs/FOAs to extract essential information such as eligibility, deadlines, budget requirements, and agency contacts, and will gain clarity on when to reach out to a program officer versus a grants manager. The session will also cover how to distinguish between modular and detailed budgets, prepare each type appropriately, and justify costs in accordance with NIH guidelines. Participants will explore common NIH forms, frequent errors, and effective troubleshooting strategies; develop strong Data Management and Sharing Plans that accurately reflect project needs and associated costs; and identify required training and certifications for key personnel across human subjects, animal research, and other compliance areas. Finally, the session will emphasize the importance of structured timelines, checklists, and regular check-ins with PIs to ensure complete, timely, and compliant submissions. By the end of the session, research administrators will be equipped with practical tools and strategies to efficiently and confidently support faculty preparing NIH R01 applications.

Has this happened to you? You begin work on a large, complex proposal, only to be constantly pulled in competing directions by colleagues from other departments, also assigned to the project. The PI is AWOL, someone wrote a letter of support for the President to sign and didn’t run it by research administration, and there are somehow three versions of the budget justification. Suddenly, you feel like you’re back working on a middle school group project, getting farther away from your goal of a successful submission each day. From the outside, the business of applying for sponsored awards is simple: Find an open funding opportunity, assemble a team, write a proposal, submit. We know, though, that each proposal submission is complicated in its own way. This is never truer than for large and complex proposals, which most often involve research support professionals beyond research administration and development. This workshop will provide attendees with the opportunity to practice strategies and use tools to understand the others on their teams, work through conflict constructively, and learn to apply the science of team science to move from taskwork to teamwork. As a group, we’ll role play the epic tale of submitting a large proposal, with lots of twists and turns—some foreseeable and some not, using dice to create a scenario and brainstorm solutions to common challenges that must be surmounted. Then, as small groups, participants will use dice to play through the experience of a developing a large, complex proposal, with many moving parts, with each participant taking the role of a research support team member. Through these scenarios, you’ll gain a better understanding of the roles your collaborators take, the internal and external factors that affect their work, and, hopefully, have some fun with your friends along the way.

Open source software has increasingly gained traction in recent years, driven both by industry collaborators’ initiatives and by a growing scientific emphasis on transparency, reproducibility, and dissemination of open knowledge. Despite its emerging popularity, many research administrators remain unsure how open-source licensing works, what obligations these licenses create, and when open-source components may introduce institutional risks. This session will provide a general and accessible overview of open-source concepts tailored for research administrators. Participants will learn what open-source software is, why researchers choose this route, and how different types of open-source licenses – such as permissive and copyleft licenses – affect the use, modification, and sharing of software. This session will also highlight common scenarios in sponsored projects where open-source considerations arise, including software developed under grants, tools built on open-source frameworks, and situations involving data restrictions or publication requirements. Drawing on experience supporting institutional open-source policy development, agreement review, and technology management, combined with a Ph.D. background in computational research, the presenter will offer practical guidance on identifying potential risks, asking the right questions, and knowing when to escalate to legal, compliance, or technology management offices. Attendees will leave with foundational knowledge, practical tools, and confidence in navigating open-source issues within the research administration environment.

This presentation examines how poorly written, outdated, or absent research security policies directly undermine a university’s ability to maintain a strong compliance posture in an increasingly complex federal regulatory environment. As institutions face heightened scrutiny under frameworks such as the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification and federal research security mandates tied to the CHIPS and Science Act, policy gaps are no longer theoretical risks they create measurable operational breakdowns. The session will connect weak policy design to specific control failures, including inconsistent export control screening, delayed conflict of interest disclosures, inadequate foreign national onboarding procedures, and incomplete subrecipient monitoring. Participants will examine how unclear or fragmented roles and responsibilities across central research administration, departmental units, and principal investigators lead to stalled workflows, duplicative reviews, and audit exposure. Real-world scenarios will illustrate how breakdowns in proposal submission, contract negotiation, award setup, subaward issuance, and investigator onboarding compound compliance risks. Additionally, the presentation will explore the operational intersection between research administration functions such as contracting, subawards, research security reviews, and onboarding and demonstrate how policy clarity (or lack thereof) directly impacts cycle times, sponsor confidence, and institutional eligibility for funding. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for identifying policy weaknesses, aligning governance structures, and strengthening internal controls to support timely compliance and audit readiness.

Behind every successful large-scale research initiative sits a complex operational ecosystem balancing governance, compliance, partnerships, infrastructure, and people across multiple organisations and jurisdictions. While scientific leadership drives discovery, the operational leadership provided by research hub managers is critical to translating ambitious programs into sustainable, high-performing initiatives. Drawing on two decades of experience managing major investments, this interactive discussion offers a practical, behind-the-scenes look at how to strategically lead the business and operations of a multi-partner research institute. The session will introduce a structured operational framework built around key pillars that support governance design, financial and compliance oversight, international collaboration, and adaptive leadership in complex environments. Participants will be actively engaged through facilitated discussion, invited to share the challenges they encounter in managing large-scale collaborations, from balancing oversight with agility to aligning diverse stakeholder expectations. Real-world insights and practical lessons learned will be used to explore common operational barriers and approaches for navigating them effectively. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies, practical tools, and reflective prompts that can be adapted within their own institutions to strengthen operational delivery and build resilient research programs. By applying this operational framework, research managers can move beyond coordinating complex initiatives to strategically leading them, shaping governance, partnerships, and delivery in ways that position their organisations for success in an increasingly constrained and competitive global funding environment.

Across the country, a growing number of institutions are transitioning from primarily teaching-focused missions to more research-intensive models. These emerging research institutions face unique challenges: expanding sponsored activity without proportionate administrative infrastructure, strengthening compliance while preserving a responsive service culture, and building sustainable research capacity within constrained or evolving financial environments. As research portfolios grow, operational complexity increases, placing additional pressure on systems, staffing, leadership alignment, institutional accountability expectations, and strategic decision-making at all levels. This session examines how research administrators play a central role in operationalizing research growth at emerging institutions. Moving beyond compliance management, participants will explore how leadership behaviors, administrative design, indirect cost strategy, and reinvestment models collectively shape research capacity trajectories, institutional resilience, and long-term competitiveness. Drawing on leadership frameworks and systems-thinking principles, this presentation provides a practical model for aligning culture, structure, and financial strategy to support responsible expansion of research portfolios. Particular attention will be given to institutions working to increase competitiveness while navigating historic underinvestment, infrastructure gaps, rapid growth pressures, or shifting strategic priorities in dynamic and uncertain funding environments. Participants will leave with an operational roadmap for strengthening administrative performance, improving principal investigator engagement, enhancing cross-unit coordination, and building sustainable research ecosystems that support long-term institutional advancement, resilience, strategic differentiation, and measurable research growth outcomes.

In the evolving landscape of academia, the role of Research Management and Administration (RMA) has become increasingly vital. This session aims to illuminate the diverse career trajectories of professionals who transitioned from PhD studies to impactful roles in RMA and those who pursued PhDs while working in RMA. Despite our varied academic backgrounds, we have all found fulfilling careers in RMA. This session will explore our unconventional paths, highlighting the skills and experiences that facilitated our transitions. Participants will be able to recognize the essential skills, values, and experiences that facilitate the transition from PhD studies to roles in RMA and vice versa. We will compare the RMA landscapes in Europe and the US, discussing the similarities and differences in roles, responsibilities, and career trajectories, and the impact of regional differences on career progression and opportunities in RMA. We'll also look at previous research on RMA and career paths and mixed profiles, including some of the leading concepts. Additionally, we will delve into the leadership paths within RMA, offering insights into how PhD holders can leverage their expertise to lead and innovate through creativity in this field. Participants will explore diverse and unconventional career paths within the RMA profession, identifying commonalities and new concepts in the career strategies and leadership approaches of RMAs. Through storytelling, theoretical concepts and personal anecdotes, we aim to inspire current and aspiring RMAs to embrace diverse career opportunities even in roles yet to come in RMA. We will also discuss the challenges, barriers, and rewards of our journeys, providing practical advice for navigating the RMA profession.

This session examines the thoughtful integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in Conflict of Interest (COI) program operations, emphasizing the need to uphold governance, professional judgment, and accountability. As compliance teams face increasing complexity and heavy workloads, the session highlights where AI can support key operational phases—such as intake, triage, review preparation, documentation, and follow-through—without sacrificing oversight. Participants will explore a realistic model for COI-AI implementation, starting with standardized workflows and decision criteria. This foundation ensures AI tools are used consistently and with transparency, essential for both compliance and stakeholder trust. The session discusses specific, bounded AI applications: summarizing disclosures, supporting case routing, comparing current cases to prior ones, and drafting documentation. Importantly, every AI output is reviewed by humans, maintaining essential oversight and accountability. Rather than pursuing automation for its own sake, the session aims to build a scalable, defensible operating model for COI management. By combining standardized processes, carefully bounded AI applications, and ongoing human review, compliance teams can improve efficiency and consistency, freeing up staff for higher-level analysis and adapting confidently to changing regulatory needs. Ultimately, the session provides compliance teams with practical strategies to integrate AI responsibly, enhance workflows, and strengthen integrity in COI operations, all while preserving the critical human elements of oversight and judgment.

We will provide an overview of how industry-sponsored studies are managed within a not-for-profit, public benefit hospital setting across pre-award study implementation and post-award study management and close-out. The primary focus for pre-award implementation process includes timelines, budgeting, feasibility and contract negotiation, and the use of standardized tools and templates to support consistent onboarding. We will share examples of forms, guidance, and workflows that promote smooth study implementation, clearly define roles and responsibilities across teams, and highlight the importance of proper research vetting and early ancillary engagement. The session will also expand on the use of centralized platforms such as our departmental website and REDCap, which serve as key pre-award intake, documentation, and tracking tools. Our post-award management includes patient billing within our site CTMS system, reconciling payments and expenses based off sponsor approved budget, re-feasibility due to protocol budget amendments and close-out of clinical trials which includes financial reconciliation. We will discuss the systems, templates and workflows our site uses including the roles and responsibilities of the study teams. The session is intended to be interactive and discussion-based, creating space for participants to exchange experiences, ask questions, and network around common challenges, lessons learned, and opportunities for improvement in industry study operations.

The research administration landscape has undergone a seismic shift, fueled by a relentless cycle of federal regulatory overhauls that have fundamentally changed how we manage pre-award. Increasing compliance requirements at the pre-award stage, implementation of common forms, changes in proposal development, challenges to indirect costs, changes in NIH peer reviews and elimination of prior approval for more than $500,000 in direct costs per year, restrictions on foreign subawards, and possibly even more changes to come have increased pre-award complexity. What does a pre-award specialist need to know? This session will examine these changes, review best practices, and explore the systems universities and institutions have implemented to remain compliant. By facilitating a collaborative exchange of institutional best practices and benchmarking successful organizational adaptations, this session empowers administrators to move beyond reactive compliance and toward a proactive model. The new changes in compliance requirements have blurred the lines of pre- and post-award. The pre-award staff must now navigate compliance mandates that were traditionally a domain for post award teams. These mandates require pre-award teams to perform critical risk-mitigation tasks, such as foreign interest vetting and disclosure auditing. Consequently, pre-award specialists must evolve into strategic compliance partners, mastering digital applications. This evolution is essential for ensuring institutional audit-readiness and minimizing faculty burden in an increasingly demanding funding environment.

This session will be delivered in an interactive, instructor-led format designed to support both in-person and virtual audiences, using a combination of structured presentation slides, real-world examples, guided discussion, and applied learning activities. Practical examples will be drawn from common sponsored project scenarios, including payroll reallocations, correction of expenditure posting errors, resolution of allocation discrepancies, and adjustments related to delayed or misclassified transactions. These examples will allow participants to analyze realistic situations and apply regulatory and institutional requirements to determine appropriate corrective actions. Participants will engage in short case-based exercises that promote critical thinking and encourage discussion of compliance risks, documentation expectations, and audit considerations. Supporting resources will include sample cost transfer justification templates, detailed reference guides summarizing federal and institutional compliance requirements, and links to applicable guidance documents. Participants will also receive step-by-step process guides that describe how to initiate, review, approve, and document cost transfers within the institution’s financial management and grants accounting systems. When appropriate, demonstrations of these systems will be incorporated to reinforce proper workflows and documentation standards. 

Research administrators are increasingly expected to manage complex and evolving regulatory and operational requirements across the pre-award and post-award lifecycle. While there are expensive research administration systems which offer robust functionality, many offices, especially those with limited resources or in transition between systems, rely heavily on spreadsheet-based tools to monitor proposals, compliance activities, and key milestones. This session describes the design, implementation, and optimization of an Excel-based proposal tracking and coordination system that supports adaptive management of research compliance and financial operations. We will be using configurable templates, conditional formatting, and integrated pivot tables to enable centralized monitoring of proposal status, sponsor and regulatory requirements, internal approvals, human and animal subject protections, and training compliance. This session would highlight practical strategies for building a resilient but flexible Excel infrastructure, including standardized data dictionaries, role-based worksheets, visual dashboards, and simple automation techniques (such as formulas and basic macros) to reduce manual errors and improve data integrity. Real-world use cases will demonstrate how this solution supports pre-award and post-award coordination, enhances visibility for stakeholders, and facilitates responsive adjustments to changing sponsor policies and institutional requirements. Participants will gain actionable templates, governance considerations, and best practices to leverage Excel as a scalable technology solution that aligns with evolving research demands and regulatory expectations. These systems can be used to coordinate with research development professionals and financial resource analysts to integrate and unify the organization’s workload.

As industry-sponsored clinical trials grow in complexity and regulatory scrutiny intensifies, research organizations face increasing pressure to modernize their operational infrastructure. In 2024–2025, the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSU-CHS) undertook a comprehensive restructuring of its clinical trials unit—centralizing regulatory oversight, unifying the clinical research coordinator (CRC) workforce, implementing an integrated clinical trial management system (CTMS) and eRegulatory platform, and establishing standardized SOPs and billing compliance automation. This transformation offers a timely case study in how midsized academic medical centers can prepare for the future of research administration. This session will explore emerging trends shaping industry-sponsored research, including technology-driven transparency, workforce shortages, and evolving sponsor expectations for speed, quality, and audit readiness. Presenters will share OSU-CHS’s implementation roadmap, highlighting strategies for change management, competency-based CRC training, and cross-departmental alignment with pharmacy, laboratory, and billing compliance teams. The session will also address common pitfalls encountered during restructuring and lessons learned that can help institutions reduce administrative burden, avoid delays, and strengthen sponsor confidence. Participants will leave with practical frameworks and replicable tools—including process maps, staffing models, and technology integration strategies—to equip their institutions for what lies ahead. By examining OSU-CHS’s journey, attendees will gain insight into how centralized, technology-enabled operations can accelerate study activation, improve compliance, and build a future-ready clinical trials enterprise.

Successful contract negotiation isn’t just about holding firm on red lines—it’s about strategic, artful communication that turns obstacles into opportunities. This presentation will explore key techniques for clearly articulating your position, navigating pushback with confidence, and securing buy-in for suggested changes. Learn how to frame negotiations as collaborative problem-solving, use persuasive tactics to align interests, and craft agreements that drive value while protecting key priorities. Whether you're facing tough counteroffers or navigating delicate discussions, this session will equip you with the skills to negotiate with clarity, influence, and success. There was a 200 word count minimum to advance. Successful contract negotiation is not simply a test of endurance or a matter of defending redlines. It is a disciplined, strategic exercise in communication—one that requires clarity of purpose, thoughtful positioning, and the ability to transform friction into forward movement. This session explores the art and structure behind effective negotiation in complex environments. Participants will learn how to articulate institutional priorities with precision, frame proposed revisions in a way that invites alignment, and respond to resistance without escalating tension. The session will examine practical techniques for managing pushback, diffusing emotionally charged exchanges, and maintaining credibility while advancing key objectives. Through real-world scenarios and structured examples, we will discuss how to shift negotiations from positional standoffs to collaborative problem-solving conversations. Attendees will gain tools for identifying shared interests, using persuasive language to build buy-in, and structuring concessions strategically to preserve leverage. Special attention will be given to navigating difficult counteroffers, addressing risk allocation concerns, and protecting critical terms without undermining relationships. Designed for professionals who regularly review, draft, or negotiate agreements, this presentation emphasizes both tactical skill and relational intelligence. Whether negotiating research contracts, vendor agreements, or institutional partnerships, participants will leave with practical frameworks to approach negotiations with confidence, composure, and strategic influence—ultimately driving agreements that protect priorities while delivering meaningful value.

There are many high and low touch strategies for incentivizing faculty to apply for grants, whether or not you have a formal research development office. These strategies are especially important for faculty members in the creative arts, humanities, social sciences, and education (CASSHE) where funding opportunities are fewer and smaller. While the amount of funding available for CASSHE research is typically relatively small, these grants and fellowships can have an outsized impact on institutional reputation and the overall vibrancy of the research enterprise at your institution. This session will explore a range of research development activities that help CASSHE faculty find the motivation and time to develop, write, and submit funding proposals. These include writing communities, writing retreats, internal seed grants, workshops, peer review programs, and collaborative team building events. Even at under-resourced and high teaching load institutions, small investments can spark grant seeking activity and improve the culture for research, collaborative partnerships, and proposal submission. Effectively launching these types of initiatives for CASSHE faculty requires that research administrators understand departmental and disciplinary standards for tenure and promotion, as well as the internal and external influences on research culture that shape grantseeking efforts. The presenters will share a sample of exercises and activities that research administrators and faculty can use in guiding proposal development and writing from their book, "Funding Your Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences."

U.S. Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs) are not required to establish institutional research security offices, but they are subject to certain research security measures. For example, federal funding agencies have implemented research security training requirements and certifications by covered individuals and Authorized Organizational Representatives that are applicable to all institutions. Responsibility for meeting these requirements may not be aligned with current institutional roles in ERIs. ERIs often do not have comprehensive software systems to manage these requirements. Research compliance offices may not have the resources needed to meet these new requirements. IT staff may not have content knowledge or awareness of the requirements to be able to incorporate solutions. This presentation will describe how ERIs can identify relevant research security compliance requirements, and will provide important information to help them address those requirements. Presenters will describe a key resource, the NSF SECURE (Safeguarding the Entire Community in the U.S. Research Ecosystem) Center, which was created to "empower the research community to make security-informed decisions about research security concerns." The Center is designed for research community input in the creation of tools and resources. ERIs will gain valuable information relevant to their institutional needs and be introduced to participation in this co-creation environment.

The federal funding trends, award delays, hiring freezes, and organizational restructuring are quickly changing the landscape of research administration. Across institutions, research administrators are facing layoffs or heavier workloads, with fewer team members to “man the fort.” Staying focused on growing compliance demands with increasingly complicated pre- and post-award portfolios—while absorbing work once shared across larger teams—can be both professionally and personally stressful. How can research administrators pivot and thrive when resources are limited? How can we take care of ourselves and our teams while navigating ongoing uncertainty? This session will provide time for a facilitated discussion, peer sharing, and real-world examples from situations where participants have faced shifting work priorities and resource constraints. We will explore the operational and emotional toll of layoffs, strategies for managing increased capacity and workload demands, and approaches to balancing pre- and post-award responsibilities effectively. Participants will then learn how to identify opportunities to expand skills, collaborate across teams, and build career resilience even when the research administration climate is less than ideal or predictable. Attendees will walk away with practical tools to help manage shifting workloads, advocate for sustainable team capacity and support models, and position themselves and their teams for long-term success.

The University of St. Thomas, a Primarily Undergraduate Institution (PUI) in Saint Paul, MN, has experienced a >3-fold increase in external grant submissions and awards received in the past decade. This increasingly complex portfolio of awards has strained our limited post-award infrastructure, creating potential compliance risks in addition to frustrations for Principal Investigators and Sponsors. In 2024, St. Thomas received an NSF GRANTED award to support an organizational restructure emphasizing post-award support and implementing new training for faculty, staff, and administration. An important component of the project involves sharing our efforts with other Minnesota private colleges and assessing the degree to which research administration challenges are shared across institutions, and to which solutions implemented at St. Thomas are transferable and scalable to other PUIs. We present a case study of actions implemented so far, and a preliminary assessment of what has been effective, and what challenges we have encountered. While we anticipated and planned for many of the activities that we have conducted during the project, there have also been unexpected events during the process. We will discuss the challenges and opportunities that those unexpected events have provided. Attendees will leave with concrete examples of staffing structures, training approaches, and workflow tools that can be adapted to institutions with limited resources. 

During 2025, a year where research institutions experienced heightened uncertainty in federal funding, securing each sponsored opportunity became increasingly more important. Many research institutions leveraged their Corporate Engagement or Research Development Office to cultivate and sustain relationships with industry organizations operating in specific fields of study. This proactive approach can open the door to both industry internal funding and valuable federal flowthrough opportunities that support long term research growth. For institutions receiving a federal flowthrough subagreement, understanding your institution’s risk tolerances, compliance expectations, and the industry sponsor’s business norms becomes essential to successfully “securing the bag” and ensuring project success. Presented from the perspective of a central research administration office, this case study examines the common challenges faced when negotiating with industry sponsors on federal flow through subagreements. These challenges often involve aligning differing interpretations of federal regulations, resolving intellectual property and publication issues, and balancing regulatory and institutional requirements with industry timelines and constraints. Through shared experiences, practical strategies, and reflective discussion, this session will explore how to navigate subagreement terms that are mutually beneficial to both the research institution and the industry sponsor. Attendees will gain insight into fostering collaborations that maintain compliance, protect institutional interests, and strengthen industry partnerships for future opportunities.

The purpose of the presentation is to provide a basic introduction to institutional service centers. We will explain what they are, where they may exist within an institution, and how to determine whether an activity qualifies as a service center. We will review key criteria used to define a service center and discuss why proper identification is essential. Once a service center is identified, we will examine applicable federal requirements—what they are, where to find them, and how they impact operations. Understanding these regulations is critical to ensuring institutional compliance and avoiding reputational and financial risk. We will outline practical methods for evaluating service center operations, including reviewing cost components, billing practices, documentation, and internal controls. Emphasis will be placed on maintaining compliance over time through regular monitoring, rate reviews, and strong oversight practices. We will also share examples of good service center models. A significant focus of the session will address one of the most common challenges: establishing appropriate and compliant rates for on-campus and off-campus users. Topics will also include allowability of costs, rate calculation methodologies, subsidies, surplus and deficit management, and key dos and don’ts. Participants will leave with practical strategies to support long-term institutional service center compliance.

Research Administration is not about knowing all the answers, it's not about knowing all the lines in a script and it's not about being able to write recite a policy verbatim it's about understanding the principles behind our practices it's about understanding that there's not always a definitive answer and that there's not always one right answer that there may be multiple correct answers or there may be no correct answer and sometimes you just have to make a judgement call but what makes a great research administrator is someone who understands the underlying rationale for a particular policy or practice and can apply that concept to any given situation (understanding the “why” helps you figure out the “what.”) Important/critical research administration work often takes place in the margins where there may be no clearly stated policies or guidelines may seem contradictory, and an RA’s instincts are the only solid guidance available. This presentation aims to provide some practical and applicable tips and tricks when dealing with these types of scenarios. The presenters will provide some case study examples, describe their respective approaches to these types of situations, and offer ways for RAs to think about how to best tackle the decision-making process in such a scenario.

Whether you are in an R1 institution with a large team of research administrators or are a team of one, collaboration is key. From working with internal staff to external funders, our work demands shared work. In this session, you will participate in three unique exercises that are designed to work on key skills needed to be successful and resilient in this field: Flexibility, Attention to Detail, and Inquiry-Based Problem Solving. As professionals, we utilize these important skills daily, but without practice and reflection we often miss opportunities to work better together and ease collective burden. This session will address typical challenges that arise in Research Administration such as difficult sponsor communication, last-minute changes or requests from PIs, and shifting policies or guidelines by acknowledging their frequency and practicing tools needed to flourish within a complex multi-faceted process. These exercises will draw from the creative arts and make use of non-traditional learning methods to stretch our minds and unlock a renewed vigor for solving the unique problems of Research Administration in 2026. Each activity is designed to encourage participants to think differently about a problem to build resilience as professionals working to maintain the many puzzles of administering sponsored funds. Come ready for a productive brain-break that will have you out of your seat and thinking in new ways about your everyday work.

Research administrators are navigating constant change, including shifting sponsor requirements, policy updates, workforce capacity constraints, and rising expectations for clear, consistent service to investigators and campus partners. At the same time, many of the most time-consuming issues repeat across the award lifecycle, especially around budgeting, award compliance, spending rules, and closeout responsibilities. Short, purpose-built videos offer a practical technology solution to reduce repetitive questions, standardize guidance, and help people complete complex tasks correctly the first time. In this hands-on, step-by-step concurrent session, attendees will build a working draft for their first grant administration video using budgeting and the full award lifecycle as the shared example lens, making the process relevant to pre-award staff, post-award staff, departmental research administrators, and research leadership. Presenters from Northern Illinois University (NIU) will teach a tool-agnostic workflow that participants can apply with the tools available at their institution and will demonstrate an example toolchain using ChatGPT to generate and refine draft scripts and slide structures and Canva to produce a short video with narrated audio overlay. Participants will leave with a defined topic, a storyboard or slide structure, and a draft script, along with an artificial intelligence prompt template, a repeatable production workflow, an accessibility checklist (captions, readability, plain language), and a review and approval approach suitable for a university environment.

Clinical trial budget negotiation is both an analytical exercise and a strategic conversation. While many negotiations focus narrowly on line-item costs, successful outcomes require a broader understanding of study complexity, operational realities, and institutional risk. This session explores practical strategies for negotiating industry-sponsored clinical trial budgets in a way that protects study teams, ensures compliance, and supports long-term financial sustainability. Participants will review common sponsor positions and learn how to assess whether proposed budgets accurately reflect protocol demands, enrollment challenges, start-up timelines, and ongoing administrative effort. Through real-life examples and case-based discussion, the presentation will demonstrate how to translate operational impact into clear financial justification — particularly when advocating for coordinator effort, pharmacy support, data management time, screen failures, and pass-through costs. Attendees will also explore techniques for framing requests constructively, maintaining collaborative sponsor relationships, and using benchmarking and historical data to strengthen negotiation positions. Importantly, the session will examine negotiation practices that can unintentionally undermine budgets later, including premature concessions, inadequate documentation of assumptions, vague amendment language, and failure to account for downstream workload. Participants will gain tools to identify red flags early and build scalable budget structures that withstand amendments and protocol changes. Designed for research administrators and study teams engaged in clinical trial budget, this session provides actionable approaches to build budgets that are defensible, scalable, and aligned with optional reality. Ultimately protecting institutional resources while supporting successful trial execution from start-up through closeout.

The period immediately following award is one of the most consequential and most overlooked phases of a research project. This intermediate-level session focuses on the human, structural, and operational work required to translate a funded award into a functioning project, without relying on specific tools or systems. Participants will examine how intentional post award onboarding and formal kickoff planning, combined with governance definition and role clarity, enable research teams to move from award receipt to active execution with shared understanding and accountability. The session emphasizes operationalizing expectations by clarifying who is responsible for what, how decisions are made, how work is coordinated, and how responsibilities evolve as the project moves into execution. Rather than centering on platforms or technical infrastructure, the discussion focuses on practice and judgment. Participants will explore how project managers, research teams, and research administrators establish fit-for-purpose initiation approaches that support compliance, collaboration, and long-term delivery across diverse research environments. A facilitated discussion component and Q&A provide space for participants to reflect on their own contexts and share initiation strategies that strengthen project outcomes from the start. The session highlights why strong initiation practices reduce downstream risk, support sponsor expectations, and improve administrative efficiency across teams and research portfolios.

When external sponsors support research or other activities at an institution, they not only expect the advancement of a proposed science, but they also expect that the funding provided will be spent in a fiscally responsible manner. While a university, hospital or institute central accounting office is ultimately the fiscal authority, this important daily management area is frequently placed on a department research administrator. For new research administrators, this can be overwhelming. Monitoring expenses, however, in a timely and comprehensive manner can prevent an excessive number of adjustments, reduce last minute scrambling at closeout, and help to keep the award audit-proof – all tenets of quality fiscal stewardship. This session will explore some industry best practices for monthly review of expenses under a Uniform Guidance umbrella. Participants will learn how certain agreement clauses, such as prior approvals and minimum effort, translate into a need for a heightened fiscal review. The session will also demonstrate how establishing specific types of account structures in an institution’s financial system can assist in a quicker review of both simple and complex awards. Finally, the participants will delve into the importance of personnel forecasting as part of a good financial management strategy in support of their faculty research portfolios.

Many research and sponsored programs do not follow the traditional rules and structures that administrators and investigators are accustomed to navigating. As federal, state, and private funding landscapes continue to evolve, institutions are increasingly encountering projects that fall outside standard proposal, budgeting, and compliance models. This presentation is designed to help research administrators and project teams confidently approach these non-traditional awards and funding mechanisms. The session will provide practical strategies and real-world case studies focused on managing projects that do not fit the standard mold. Participants will explore how to work effectively with sponsors such as ARPA-H, BARDA, and a variety of state and local funding agencies, as well as other emerging or unconventional funding sources. These sponsors often bring unique expectations related to timelines, deliverables, reporting, and financial management, requiring a more flexible and proactive approach from institutional teams. In addition, the presentation will address how to manage “odd and unusual” budget requirements that frequently accompany non-traditional awards. Topics will include milestone-based budgets, hourly rate structures, non-standard salary caps or limitations, and other atypical cost rules. Attendees will gain insights into how to interpret sponsor guidance, communicate expectations with investigators, and build internal processes that support compliance while maintaining project momentum. By the end of the session, participants will be better equipped to navigate complexity, reduce risk, and support innovative research efforts funded by non-traditional sponsors.

Research compliance is often viewed primarily as a managerial function centered on policies, procedures, monitoring activities, and customer service interactions. While these components are essential to day to day operations, truly effective and forward looking compliance programs require more than routine oversight. They are built on intentional strategies designed to promote sustained compliance, strengthen institutional culture, and support positive, long term relationships with researchers. This session will guide compliance professionals, research administrators, and institutional leaders in examining their current practices and recognizing opportunities to shift from task driven management to leadership oriented and strategy focused approaches. Through discussion and applied examples, the presenters will demonstrate how strategically designed compliance programs can elevate research excellence by improving risk identification and mitigation processes, strengthening communication plans, and fostering meaningful engagement with institutional researchers at every experience level. Participants will explore operational strategies that contribute to long-term institutional success, including developing and using risk-based metrics, implementing proactive education and structured onboarding programs, and maintaining consistent training and succession planning for compliance committees to support continuity and shared purpose. These approaches are intended to build trust, transparency, and collaborative partnerships between researchers and compliance offices, ultimately reinforcing a culture of compliance excellence and positioning institutions to thrive in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.

Operational excellence in research administration depends upon delivering efficient and high-quality services that ensure a positive customer experience. The more streamlined the routine work, the easier it is to pivot when faced with new, urgent, and unexpected work, and to achieve and consistently provide high-quality services. Additionally, automation provides the added benefits of enhancing productivity, reducing errors, clarifying job duties and accountability, improving transparency, reducing the time and resources needed to complete tasks, and leading to cost savings. This interactive session will focus on several key points: 1) determining if your organization is ready for (and in need of) automation/streamlining, 2) identifying areas where efficiency and/or improvements are needed, 3) considering a variety of factors when deciding to streamline and/or automate processes, and 4) exploring various strategies for automating/streamlining sponsored programs workflow. Eight key strategies for streamlining work, automating tasks, and improving efficiency that can lead to increased operational excellence in sponsored programs will be discussed. Participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences with automating or otherwise streamlining sponsored programs work and to reflect on the benefits and challenges encountered. By the end of the session, attendees will have gained a deeper understanding of how to enhance operational excellence through strategic automation and streamlining.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutional research training grants (e.g., T32) are among the most complex proposals supported by pre-award offices, requiring coordination among multiple faculty, staff, departments, and institutional units. Unlike traditional research applications, these training grant proposals demand the development of trainee recruitment strategies, mentoring plans, program curricula, evaluation frameworks, data infrastructure, and formal institutional commitments. Research administrators are often responsible for orchestrating this coordination, yet many institutions approach training grant proposals reactively, resulting in fragmented workflows, unclear role delineation, and increased proposal risk. This session reframes National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant submissions as sponsored program development initiatives and centers the strategic role of the research administrator in building coordinated, resilient pre-award infrastructure. Participants will examine topics that include developing compliant budgets, navigating required training data tables, and connecting faculty with institutional resources such as evaluation support, data and outcomes offices, compliance units, and leadership signatories. Strategies for engaging faculty researchers early, clarifying expectations, and adapting administrative support structures, regardless of whether an institution uses a centralized or decentralized model, will be emphasized. Participants will leave with scalable, adaptable tools to enhance collaboration, improve proposal readiness, and strengthen pre-award support for complex, multi-stakeholder training grant submissions.

Have you had a portfolio that contained a challenging faculty member? Did you know what to do? Discussion about characteristics and behaviors found in productive PI/RA partnerships, including seven key elements that promote successful relationships. These key elements include: building trust, mutual respect, communication, responsiveness, accountability, subject matter expertise and conflict resolution. Discussion is essential to stimulate RA curiosity about these key pieces of their role for how they can contribute to a successful relationship. While exposing these elements, we will analyze questions RA’s can ask PI’s to better solidify a successful partnership. We will dive into each key element separately engaging participants in the discussion. RA’s have their own barriers they bring to the table, each question will be designed to eliminate these barriers. Every element will correlate with questions RA’s can use as a template with their own PI’s. We will identify areas in these working relationships that are in need of strengthening. Post discussion, RA’s will have a list of questions they can ask their PI to improve any key element they see fit. Working relationships between RA and PI’s are needed to promote research success and growth. This is crucial work that enables our research teams to tackle humanity’s toughest problems.

This session will review the requirements for subrecipient execution and monitoring under OMB Uniform Guidance 2 CFR 200 (UG), and specific federal agency requirements. The presentation will review the current requirements (what are we doing now), by identifying the major Federal Agency subaward overhaul, impact of the temporary pauses and renegotiations, the rise in risk management, and compliance with UG. The presentation will also explore new foreign collaboration structure, increased use of fixed amount subawards, stricter security and compliance requirements, as well as other proposed upcoming changes as it pertains to subrecipient execution and monitoring. Discussion will be provided from both the Pre-Award and Post-Award perspective including experienced challenges, and case studies. We will explore ways of bridging the gap between Pre-Award risk assessment and Post Award monitoring by examining:
• The current state: recent federal agency overhauls, temporary pauses, and UG compliance.
• The evolving landscape: how are we navigating the subawards both cost-reimbursable and fixed amount subawards and the intricacies of new foreign collaboration structures.
• Security & Risk: strategies for meeting stricter federal security mandates (NSPM-33) and implementing proactive risk-based monitoring
• Real-world application: through case-studies, we will discuss the friction points between setup and execution, offering how our institution resolves and overcomes administrative challenges.
The session will be interactive and encourage participation from attendees to share experiences/from their respective institutions.

Subrecipient monitoring is a core responsibility of pass-through entities and a critical area of compliance under the Uniform Guidance. This session offers a practical, research administration-focused overview of federal requirements governing subrecipient monitoring, including 2 CFR §200.331–332 and closeout obligations under 2 CFR §200.344–345. Designed for professionals working across pre-award and post-award functions, the presentation emphasizes how regulatory expectations translate into consistent, defensible institutional practices. Participants will examine the essential components of an effective subrecipient monitoring process, including subrecipient versus contractor determination, risk assessment, financial and performance monitoring, and documentation standards. The session will highlight common compliance challenges and audit findings related to subawards, with discussion of strategies for aligning monitoring activities to the level of risk, sponsor requirements, and institutional capacity. Using a grant lifecycle framework, the presentation will explore monitoring considerations beginning at proposal development and budget review, continuing through award setup and subaward negotiation, and extending into ongoing oversight, reporting, and corrective action. Particular emphasis will be placed on roles and responsibilities across central offices and departments, and on maintaining appropriate documentation to demonstrate compliance. The session will conclude with closeout requirements, including final financial and performance reporting, issue resolution, and record retention. Attendees will leave with actionable tools, practical examples, and a clearer understanding of how to implement scalable, risk-based subrecipient monitoring practices that support compliance, reduce audit exposure, and strengthen research partnerships across their institutions.

Identify and evaluate key intellectual property provisions in research contracts, including ownership, licensing rights, royalties, data rights and associated risk exposure to protect institutional interests and long-term innovation goals. Analyze payment structures and financial terms, including development of milestone payments, reduction of administrative burden related to sponsor invoicing requirements, ensure appropriate risk allocation, safeguard funding and maintain compliance with institutional policies and sponsor requirements, with particular emphasis on foreign agreements and industry-sponsored research. Assess publication clauses to balance academic freedom and research integrity with sponsor review rights, confidentiality obligations, open access requirements, export control considerations, regulatory requirements, potential impact on a researcher's ability to publish and the university's ability to commercialize intellectual property. Evaluate risk related to delays in publication, restrictions on dissemination and conflicts with open research principles. Apply best business practices to contract negotiations, including strategic positioning, stakeholder alignment, documentation and approval standards, clear communication and process efficiency to reduce institutional risk and strengthen negotiation outcomes. By strengthening these competencies, research administration professionals enhance institutional compliance, improve financial stewardship, accelerate contract turnaround times and foster productive sponsor relationships, ultimately supporting faculty success while protecting the organization’s legal, financial and reputational interests and balancing risk in research research contracts across more complex and challenging provisions.

This presentation provides a practical introduction to Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) — two of the most frequently encountered contracts in research administration. NDAs, also known as confidentiality agreements, or confidential disclosure agreements, protect the confidentiality of disclosed information. MTAs facilitate the transfer of research materials between participating institutions. Participants will gain a foundational understanding of how both MTAs and NDAs support research activities, protect confidential information, and govern the transfer, use, and deposition of research materials and information. We will discuss the basic uses of both types of agreements, the situations where administrators may encounter them, as well as commonalities and differences between the two. Customary terms and conditions that appear in each type of agreement will also be discussed. The session will highlight the role MTAs and NDAs play in enabling research collaboration while safeguarding institutional interests. It will also examine key provisions commonly found in each agreement, including confidentiality, permitted use, intellectual property, publication rights, liability, and the processes involved in transferring and depositing materials. By the end of the presentation, attendees will be better equipped to recognize critical confidentiality terms, understand how materials are properly transferred and deposited, including practical implications of these agreements in research administration.

As research enterprises continue to grow in scale, regulatory complexity, and interdisciplinary scope, often amid constrained or shrinking budgets, many institutions rely on decentralized or hybrid research administration models to remain responsive to faculty needs. While these models offer proximity, flexibility, and discipline-specific expertise, they can also introduce persistent challenges related to consistency, compliance oversight, communication gaps, role ambiguity, and uneven faculty experiences. This interactive session explores strategies for synthesizing research administration support services across decentralized environments in ways that enhance faculty engagement while maintaining strong compliance, accountability, and stewardship of sponsored funds. Drawing on the experiences, best practices, and lessons learned from Lehman College of the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley, participants will examine common structural and cultural pain points inherent in decentralized systems. The session will introduce practical alignment frameworks that clarify roles, strengthen coordination between central and local units, and promote shared ownership of the research lifecycle. Through guided discussion and hands-on activities, attendees will map their own institutional support models, assess areas of duplication or risk, and identify opportunities for improved integration and communication. Grounded in real-world examples and peer exchange, this session will equip research administrators with actionable strategies to reduce administrative burden, strengthen collaboration, and build a more sustainable, faculty-centered, and compliant research administration ecosystem.

Just as Honolulu’s tides demand both steady anchors and adaptive navigation, successful clinical trial budgeting requires transparency, sustainability, equity, and skilled negotiation. Clinical trial budgeting is often taught in theory, but research administrators working in academic and hospital systems face realities that are far more complex. This session provides a practical, experience-based approach to building, negotiating, and defending clinical trial budgets while balancing institutional sustainability, sponsor constraints, and equitable patient participation. Drawing from real-world scenarios in publicly funded and under-resourced healthcare settings, this session will equip attendees with tools they can immediately apply in their own organizations.
T — Transparency
1. Identify key components of a transparent, defensible, and auditable clinical trial budget that accurately reflects institutional costs, staff effort, and patient-facing requirements.
I — Institutional Sustainability
2. Recognize common sponsor budgeting strategies and assess their impact on long-term institutional sustainability, particularly in academic and safety-net healthcare systems.
D — Diversity & Access
3. Advocate for patient stipends, technology access, and equitable trial participation, with specific attention to barriers faced by underrepresented and financially burdened populations.
E — Effective Negotiation
4. Apply practical negotiation techniques that balance sponsor constraints with site realities while protecting mission-driven research goals.
Integrated Application (T.I.D.E. in Practice)
5. Identify and avoid common budgeting pitfalls that undermine transparency, sustainability, and equitable access in clinical trial implementation.

Many institutions have access to powerful technology but underuse it to support research training, competency tracking, and ongoing professional development for clinical research staff. This deep dive session will demonstrate how a pediatric research training program leveraged everyday tools to create a sustainable, tech-enabled infrastructure for onboarding and upskilling coordinators, investigators, and support staff. The presenter will share concrete examples of using electronic data capture platforms to manage curricula, document competencies, and generate training records; collaboration platforms to host resource hubs, discussion channels, and peer learning communities; automation workflows to send reminders, track expirations, and nudge completion; and dashboards to visualize training progress, identify gaps, and connect training data to quality and compliance outcomes. Participants will engage in guided process-mapping exercises to document an existing training or onboarding pathway and pinpoint specific steps where technology can reduce friction, increase transparency, or improve data for decision-making. Through demonstrations, peer discussion, and brief consultative activities, attendees will explore configuration ideas that are tool-agnostic, scalable, and adaptable to different institutional environments and resource levels. They will leave with a simple process-mapping template, examples of low-lift technology configurations, and a draft implementation plan for a tech-enabled training solution tailored to their own context and priorities.

The session will evaluate practical approaches and lessons learned across the full research administration lifecycle when dealing with projects that have an international component. The session will delve into proposal submission and institutional review, award acceptance and setup, issuing outgoing subawards and subrecipient monitoring, export controls and international compliance considerations, record retention requirements, and award closeout. We will identify and address the core issues that research offices face in their quest to maintain compliance while simultaneously enabling timely and efficient execution of international research operations. The session will address common roadblocks that institutions encounter in this area, such as delays or errors in proposal submission and award setup (impacting project start-up, budgeting, and reporting), uneven subrecipient risk assessment and monitoring (increasing questioned-costs and audit exposure), insufficient export control and international compliance screening and escalation (creating regulatory and reputational risk). We would also like to explore the impact of unclear or inconsistently applied record retention practices (weakening audit readiness and continuity). When preparing for award closeout, we want to highlight the impact of closeout gaps in final reporting, documentation, and subrecipient wrap-up (leading to late reports, payment holds, and increased sponsor scrutiny). We will encourage audience participation to identify broader experiences and explore real-world examples.

The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, otherwise known as the Patent and Trademark Act Amendments, allows universities and non-profits to retain ownership of inventions created through federally funded research, rather than assigning them to the government. This legislation enables universities to patent, license, and commercialize technologies, accelerating their transition from lab to marketplace . Under Bayh-Dole, federal contractors or grantees may elect to retain the patent rights to an invention made with federal support. The federal contractor may then use the invention itself or license the patent(s) to industry partner. The Act has transformed universities into active participants in the commercial sector, with dedicated University technology transfer offices managing patenting and licensing. Allowing U.S. institutions to earn royalties through the licensing of their research provided a powerful incentive for universities and other institutions to pursue commercialization opportunities. This session seeks to take a deep dive into the Act and explore the implications of this landmark law for research institutions and the requirements for research administrators to manage these issues. Attendees will obtain a general overview of the law, how it applies to departmental research administrators, and the implications on patent protection, licensing, and commercialization for investigators. Note: no pineapples were harmed in the creation of this presentation.

Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) play a vital role in expanding biomedical research capacity and providing undergraduate research opportunities. However, systemic barriers—such as limited administrative infrastructure, compliance challenges, and procurement delays—often prevent PUIs from fully utilizing awarded funds and engaging in sustainable research. These challenges are not about scientific capability but operational capacity, and they can significantly hinder participation in federally funded programs like NIH-INBRE. This session introduces the PUI Project, a new NIH-INBRE pilot program designed to address these barriers through a multi-phase, systems-level approach. Phase 1 of the project will be complete by the time of this meeting. We will share initial findings from Phase 1, including insights into the most pressing administrative and compliance challenges faced by PUIs. Planned activities include operational and compliance capacity building, faculty and staff professional development, policy alignment, and a PUI cohort model to foster shared learning and collaboration. Attendees will learn about the program’s design, early data, and next steps, and will have the opportunity to provide feedback that will inform implementation. By investing in people, processes, and technology, this initiative aims to help PUIs move toward long-term research independence and resilience.

In many research environments, project management relies heavily on spreadsheets, shared drives, and paper tools that are difficult to maintain and often lead to duplicated effort, missed deadlines, and unclear accountability. At the Heart, Vascular, and Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic, these challenges affected collaboration across multiple research teams, operational departments, and external partners. To create a more transparent and efficient project management structure, our group implemented Microsoft Planner as a centralized digital system for tracking tasks, deadlines, milestones, and cross-functional responsibilities. This session describes the transition from manual processes to an integrated digital workflow using Microsoft Planner and illustrates how individual project boards, buckets, calendars, and dashboard views were used to monitor study start-up, regulatory activities, operational deadlines, and staff-level assignments. Attendees will learn how using Planner improved communication, alignment, and accountability across research teams, and how automated reminders and milestone visualization supported timely completion of key deliverables. Examples from real projects will demonstrate how Planner increased transparency for leadership, streamlined team meetings, and supported more objective performance evaluations. The session will also provide step-by-step guidance on implementing Planner in a research administration environment, including initial setup, user adoption strategies, common pitfalls, and lessons learned while scaling from a single team to broader departmental use, enabling attendees to adopt practical strategies for consistent, high-reliability project management within research organizations of any size.

Research administrators are often associated with compliance oversight and operational coordination; however, their strategic role in advancing community engagement and research dissemination is frequently underrecognized. This presentation reframes research administrators as essential connectors within the research ecosystem — bridging investigators, institutions, and community stakeholders to enhance the reach, relevance, and measurable impact of research. The session will examine how administrators can move beyond transactional functions to serve as strategic partners in fostering reciprocal community relationships, supporting inclusive research design, and aligning projects with institutional missions and public priorities. Participants will gain insight into how research administrators facilitate cross-sector collaboration, manage regulatory and sponsor requirements while promoting accessibility and transparency, translate complex research findings for diverse audiences, and proactively plan dissemination pathways that extend beyond traditional academic channels. The session will address practical challenges such as balancing compliance with community responsiveness, navigating data sharing and privacy considerations, coordinating multi-stakeholder communication, and embedding engagement activities into grant development and post-award management processes. Emphasis will be placed on scalable tools, internal policy alignment, and strategies for documenting and demonstrating community impact in proposals and reports. By centering research administrators as leaders in engagement infrastructure, this session highlights their value in strengthening trust, broadening participation, and ensuring that research outcomes meaningfully serve both institutional goals and the communities that support and benefit from the research enterprise.

Research administrators and academic leaders are increasingly tasked with helping faculty and early-career researchers succeed in an intensely competitive funding environment. The Strategic Planning in Action for Research and Knowledge (SPARK) program at the Indiana University School of Public Health–Bloomington exemplifies a robust institutional model to support proposal development, offering structured, week long writing workshops with protected time, expert consultation across disciplines (from grant writers and statisticians to graphic designers), and peer networking opportunities. This session will describe how SPARK enables researchers, especially postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and new faculty—to refine scientific aims, strengthen budget and methodology narratives, and accelerate submission readiness. We will highlight program design choices, stakeholder engagement strategies, measurable outcomes (e.g., improved proposal quality and submission success), and lessons learned in adapting the model across departments. By unpacking this evidence informed research support strategy, participants will gain actionable insights to replicate, tailor, or scale similar initiatives within their institutions. 

Effective leadership requires far more than technical knowledge—lasting influence comes from the ability to inspire, guide, and meaningfully support others. One of the most powerful yet often overlooked pathways for developing these capabilities is mentorship. When approached intentionally, mentorship becomes a dynamic tool for strengthening essential leadership skills, including communication, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and relationship building. It creates a space where individuals can reflect, practice new behaviors, and gain perspective through reciprocal learning. This session examines how professionals at any career stage can leverage mentorship to enhance their leadership readiness. Participants will explore core mentoring practices such as active listening, aligning expectations and goals, offering constructive and timely feedback, and engaging in reflective dialogue that promotes insight and growth. These approaches not only deepen professional relationships but also expand a leader’s ability to influence and support others effectively. Real-world examples and practical frameworks will illustrate how mentorship accelerates personal development, improves team collaboration, and contributes to healthier, more effective organizational cultures. Whether attendees serve in formal mentoring roles, informally coach colleagues, or participate in peer-to-peer mentoring partnerships, they will gain actionable strategies to strengthen their leadership impact. The session highlights how mentorship broadens perspective, builds confidence, and helps individuals navigate increasing levels of responsibility with clarity and resilience. By the conclusion of the session, participants will develop a personalized action plan to intentionally apply mentorship skills in their current positions and future leadership opportunities, supporting their growth as adaptive, collaborative, and influential leaders.

Research administrators are being asked to answer increasingly specific questions with data: How did our institution’s research outputs change after a new policy? Which departments are growing fastest in particular topic areas? Where are we partnering internationally, and how has that shifted over time? For years, universities often had two choices: buy expensive, pre-built analytics products with fixed workflows, or rely on a small number of technical specialists with many competing priorities to build custom reporting pipelines on tight timelines. This session introduces a third path: “vibe coding,” where large language models help non-specialists write working software quickly. Using OpenAlex as a completely open database of the global research ecosystem (research outputs, authors, institutions, topics, citations, and more), participants will learn how to turn plain-language questions into custom research intelligence dashboards and analyses in minutes—without vendor lock-in, licenses, or specialized infrastructure. The session is highly interactive. Participants will work through a guided build-along where we translate a real institutional questions suggested by participants into (1) a data pull from OpenAlex, (2) a simple analysis, and (3) a lightweight dashboard or shareable report. Participants will leave with reusable prompts, starter templates, and a clear approach for building repeatable, auditable research intelligence workflows using open data.

This session will provide an overview of the requirements associated with Just-in-Time (JIT) submissions for major federal sponsors, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as NIH Delayed Onset awards. In addition to human subjects research considerations, the session will incorporate requirements for animal research, highlighting the role of both the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). We will walk through these different types of submissions/awards as they are often conflated by compliance offices and others in research administration. Particular emphasis will be placed on the IRB and IACUC requirements that apply at the JIT and award stages, including when protocol approval is required, when it may be deferred, and how delayed onset determinations are made for both human and animal research. Participants will gain a clearer understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of IRBs and IACUCs in reviewing and supporting these types of funding notices, conditions and awards. The session will address common questions and challenges that arise when navigating IRB and IACUC requirements in the context of JIT and delayed onset funding, including coordination between investigators, research administration, and compliance offices. Attention will be given to differences and similarities in timing, documentation, and regulatory expectations across human and animal research oversight processes. The session will conclude with a discussion of practical options for meeting IRB and IACUC requirements efficiently while remaining compliant with agency expectations. Recommended best practices will be shared, along with strategies to reduce delays, improve communication, and support successful and timely award activation. This session is designed for research administrators, IRB and IACUC professionals, and investigators seeking to strengthen their understanding of JIT and delayed onset processes across both human and animal research.

Managing large scale research portfolios can often feel like a juggling act for the circus - too many flaming torches in the air and you are always panicking that something will drop. In this session, two experienced ringmasters will take you through the juggling act of managing four large research program portfolios from a research administration perspective. We will discuss pre/post award management, hiring / space concerns, and other tasks which often fall into our laps during this complicated process. Throughout our presentation, we will share the specific tools we use that allow us to seamlessly juggle pre/post award management in a lifecycle research administration environment. Think you are already juggling enough? We will discuss circumstances when picking up another torch can actually make your management processes easier. There are many non-research administrative tasks that fall into our laps but they allow us to elevate our final production, which this presentation will help demonstrate. Attendees will receive best practices for program and project management, communication strategies for working together, and tips and tricks to keep things in the air and running smoothly. In addition, we will discuss pitfalls throughout the process based on real life issues and what to do when you drop one of your torches. Finally, attendees will be given the opportunity to ask questions and take home practical tools that they can implement in their institutional environments.

Principal Investigator (PI) transitions—whether carefully planned or unexpectedly sudden—may present significant and multifaceted challenges for the administration of research programs. These transitions can definitely disrupt study continuity, introduce regulatory and compliance risks, complicate sponsor obligations, reduce access to institutional knowledge, and create uncertainty for research teams. This session will explore practical, real-world strategies for navigating PI departures through a coordinated, cross-functional approach that brings together research administration, compliance offices, departmental leadership, human resources, IT, legal counsel, and sponsor-facing partners and other institutional stakeholders. Participants will learn how to develop a structured PI transition plan that supports both preparedness and rapid response. Key topics will include assessing operational and regulatory risk, maintaining compliance throughout the transition period, preserving essential documentation and data, and ensuring clear, timely communication with internal and external stakeholders. The session will also address how to implement reassignment pathways, transfer responsibilities, or initiate orderly project closeout in ways that safeguard institutional interests and protect the integrity of ongoing research. Designed for research administrators, compliance professionals, operational leaders and other key institutional stakeholders, this session offers actionable tools, templates, and guidance to help institutions proactively prepare for PI transitions and respond effectively when they occur, ultimately supporting stable and compliant research operations.

In industry-sponsored clinical trials, study close-out is often treated as the endpoint of operational activity. In reality, it marks the beginning of a critical post-trial phase that carries regulatory, financial, and strategic implications for research institutions. From record retention requirements and sponsor-owned data limitations to financial reconciliation and long-term audit exposure, the “long tail” of a clinical trial presents both risk and opportunity. This session will examine post-trial data governance through the lens of industry-sponsored research. Participants will explore regulatory expectations, including record retention requirements under U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidance and ICH E6(R2), common financial and documentation vulnerabilities that emerge after close-out, and practical strategies to strengthen audit readiness. The session will introduce a governance maturity framework that shifts post-trial data management from a reactive compliance task to a strategic asset and provide a list of issues that need attention post-trial, such as ongoing confidentiality and indemnification obligations. Attendees will leave with practical tools to assess institutional risk, improve stewardship, and leverage performance data to enhance sponsor relationships and future trial competitiveness. Designed for research administrators, clinical trial leaders, and compliance professionals, this session supports institutions seeking to ride the next wave of opportunity by strengthening post-trial governance and strategic positioning.

Gamification provides a dynamic, engaging approach to onboarding and early training in Research Administration by turning complex policies, procedures, and workflows into interactive learning experiences that build understanding, confidence, and long-term retention. Through structured elements such as challenges, scenario-based exercises, quizzes, and team activities, new staff can practice real-world decision-making in a low-risk, collaborative and supportive environment that reflects the diverse responsibilities they will face in their roles. This approach helps trainees navigate compliance requirements, institutional processes, and sponsor expectations in a way that feels approachable, practical, and accessible rather than overwhelming. By incorporating game-based methods, training becomes more active and participatory, which reduces cognitive overload and increases motivation. Learners are more likely to recall key concepts when they are reinforced through repetition, competition, collaboration, and immediate feedback. Gamification also creates a positive learning culture by encouraging engagement, curiosity, and peer interaction, elements that are especially valuable for individuals who are new to the field and may be unfamiliar with Research Administration terminology or systems. Ultimately, gamification strengthens foundational competency early in the onboarding process and supports sustained knowledge retention over time. This leads to improved accuracy, greater efficiency, and higher overall quality in research administrative practices throughout the institution through innovative approaches.

This session will examine the relationship between central office research administrators and departmental staff who provide administrative support to PIs at emerging research institutions, which can positively or negatively affect the progress of a research project. At such institutions, these departmental staff may or may not be permanent and professional, may or may not have much (or any) training in research administration, and may or may not have many competing duties. Throughout the session, we will explore the various ways central office research administrators interact with departmental staff and brainstorm strategies to improve that relationship at your own institution. This session will conclude with a practical example of a program developed at Ball State University that provides intentional, targeted training for departmental staff who are administrative support for PIs. ULTRAS (Unit Level Training in Research Administration for Staff) was developed in 2024 to provide training and resources to departmental administrative staff in units that have sponsored projects. Our initial assessment shows that when departmental staff have access to appropriate training and resources, they are more empowered to support PIs and their research projects, and the grant administration process is more consistent across the institution. We will discuss the details of this assessment, including participation data, successes of this program, opportunities for improvement, and plans for the future.

This session provides an overview of the NSF SECURE Center, including its activities, products, and plans for future development.  Participants will learn how the NSF SECURE Center is structured, what products are available, how to engage with the Center team, and what to expect in the coming months.
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This session will provide an overview of the latest NIH policies and effective dates as well as anticipated updates for the coming year. Hear about the latest  changes in grant policy, including possible updates on research security program requirements, engagement with international partners and other topics.
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This session examines strategies for building robust data management infrastructures, focusing on the integration of digital tools and institutional policies to ensure data integrity and accessibility. The session provides a practical roadmap for aligning departmental support with evolving sponsor requirements for open science and long-term data preservation.
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This session will provide an overview of the role of investigative bodies within the federal government, such as the Government Accountability office and agency investigative units and Offices of Inspector General. The session will highlight recent reports and findings of interest to the SRAI community.
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This session will provide an update on NSF proposal and award policies and procedures. The presentation will include information about upcoming changes to the how NSF is modernizing its grants policies and funding opportunities.