NSU Leads $300K NSF Grant to Tackle Major Florida Challenges

Florida faces many pressing regional issues such as hurricane and flood mitigation, an aging population, harmful algal blooms, among others. These societal challenges are particularly relevant to our state but widespread around the U.S. and world. Solving these intractable problems requires team-based solutions that cross disciplinary boundaries, and likely require collaborations between academia, government, industry, and other stakeholders.

A recently awarded, collaborative $300,000 NSF grant will fund research support staff from Florida universities to do researcher “matchmaking,” creating interdisciplinary teams of faculty from across the state. Each team will focus on a Florida-based challenge and receive professional development support in their idea development and grant seeking.

The leaders of this project (listed below) come from five Florida institutions (led by Nova Southeastern University) and represent expertise in team science, technology-supported collaboration, faculty training and mentorship, research project ideation and proposal development, large-scale networking events, and education/social science research.

• Melanie Bauer (Nova Southeastern University) serves as the PI/Project Director
• Roxana Ross (Nova Southeastern University)
• Joshua Roney (University of Central Florida)
• Stephen Fiore (University of Central Florida)
• Beth Hodges (Florida State University)
• Jeanne Viviani (Florida Atlantic University)
• Leigh Brasfield (University of West Florida)

This initiative was born out of a statewide network of research development professionals, the Florida Research Development Alliance (FloRDA; https://florda.org/), with current members from 21 Florida institutions. Success in this project will provide a model for replication and scaling by states and other sizable networks focused on addressing major societal challenges.

For more information, please contact the project lead, Melanie Bauer (mbauer1@nova.edu).

Posted 02/27/22