The research landscape is changing. Penn Forward’s Research Strategy co-chairs are ready to adapt

What are some of the guiding principles as you’re leading this group and thinking through some of these big ideas? 

David Meaney: I think the first is exactly that: To think big. In these times, it can be challenging for each of us, throughout our days, to think 10 or 20 years from now. In the charge that President Jameson gave all the working groups, one of the things he impressed upon us was to imagine Penn in 2035 and have that drive your thinking. Because anything you invest in, especially if it’s a big idea now, will take about a decade for it to transform the campus. So, time and again we’ve come back to that principle. We’ve been self-critical as a group: Is it a big idea, or is it an idea we’re just going to do anyway, and can we write it down and set it off to the side? 

Michael Ostap: When we think across schools as well, research excellence is always top of the list, and that comes from hiring the best people, whether that’s faculty, trainees, or staff. That’s not something we’re going to compromise on and it’s something we’re going to continue. We’re also thinking about how to continue to break down barriers between schools, build new collaborations, and generate new insights into how Penn can better serve humanity. This isn’t just about research; it’s about making sure Penn stays a leader in discovery and collaboration.

How would you explain your charge and what you’ve been working on?

Meaney: It’s to reinvent the way Penn pushes its research mission to grow its impact even more. 

Ostap: It’s preparing our research enterprise for a future with diversified funding models and interdisciplinary efforts. We have built a model for much of our research that’s largely driven by federal funding. We’re not expecting federal funding to go away, but we need to be careful stewards of that funding, and we need to identify alternative funding streams. This also includes organizing ourselves to provide the most effective collaborations, break down barriers between research groups and schools, and make us the most attractive to potential funders and investors.

Meaney: An emerging feeling is that we’ve been very, very good with the current model. And it’s not just finding success in the current model in the traditional ways, but if you look at how much research activity Penn has relative to its peers, I’m convinced that we’re better than most, if not all, institutions in using the results of that sponsored research for making an impact in people’s lives. We have data that I’ve now seen as part of the working group, and it’s very clear that the population is living healthier lives and surviving diseases in part because of research that Penn has been part of. And it’s unquestionable. I would put Penn up against any other institution in the world, with our record in that. 

So, for me, reinventing the research enterprise means amplifying this core signature of Penn and its impact on the world. If we build this amplifier correctly, a decade from now people will say, ‘Looking back on it, Penn was at an institutional inflection point 10 years ago. Their research was finding its way into people’s lives, but we had no idea that the impact of Penn’s research would grow so quickly, and widely, to affect our lives, the health of the planet, our ability to communicate with each other, and the way that we govern ourselves.’ I also think we will be opportunistic in this decade—we may make the discovery or insight here, or the discovery might be made elsewhere, and we are the ones who reduce it to practice as new policies, sustainable materials, or new treatments. 

I have a feeling that in the long run, if we’re successful, we might be remembered for being at that inflection point. 

What kind of feedback have you been able to gather during this process?

Meaney: In our first meeting of the working group, we said to them and stressed, ‘You are ambassadors for us, with your respective colleagues and your schools and institutes that you are part of. So please go out and spread the word and listen on our behalf.’ There was also a survey that was sent out that faculty, students, staff were asked to fill in any suggestion they had for each of the working groups. And we’ve been very careful about not just looking within but understanding how we compare against our peers. When we make investments in, say, life sciences, what’s the scale of that investment and the success of that investment compared to others? We’ve tried to bring as many people in [as possible]. 

Ostap: One other thing about the composition of our committee, it includes trainees. It’s impossible to untangle research excellence from research training. Trainees have an active voice and are participating in a meaningful way. So, not only is the information going out from the working group, as Dave said, there’s a lot of information coming in.

Regardless of the changing funding landscape, do you feel these are conversations our community would need to have anyway?

Ostap: One hundred percent. This is really an opportunity to look at how we communicate across campus and how we prioritize our resources to figure out the best way forward. 

Meaney: And I would say it wouldn’t have the success I think it’s going to have if we didn’t have In Principle and Practice as a precedent. I’ve read it many, many times, and it’s described as a strategic framework and it’s exactly true. It’s almost like the foreword to the book, and we’re writing the first chapter of this book and it really has been a guiding light for a lot of us. 

Where are you in the process now?

Meaney: We’re in the process of taking what was about 150 ideas and coalescing them into some of these larger ideas. We know that what might emerge is a handful, but there’s maybe three or four times as many that are just as impactful that we’re putting on the shelf, so that maybe a year from now we can pull them off and start working.

Ostap: One of the things that makes Penn special is how collaborative it is, not only across departments within schools, but also across schools themselves. And I think this culture has really made the job that Dave and I have been tasked with a lot easier. The people on our working group really want to work together and come up with ideas and solutions that cross multiple domains. And we see that every time.