May/June 2025

In this issue

Research highlights  |  Innovation spotlight  |  New awards  
Unsung heroes  |  Faculty kudos  |  Research development  |  Nuts & bolts

KU is a powerful engine of economic growth and job creation for the state of Kansas, according to a new study detailing the university’s impact. Among other highlights, the report shows that KU contributed $315 million in research spending to the Kansas economy in fiscal year 2023. This excludes facilities and administration spending, which are captured under KU’s operations cost contributions. 

About 1 in 3 Kansas students don’t meet fundamental levels of reading. To help define needs across the state, a KU research team is visiting schools in all corners of Kansas to observe classrooms and conduct focus groups with educators, families and students.  

“We’ll be working closely with Workforce Partnership and Kansas City Public Libraries to expand our career readiness training for this population and also to train future educators to be better prepared to serve justice-impacted communities,” said Hyunjin Seo, Oscar Stauffer Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications and director of the Center for Digital Inclusion.

Kip Nielsen, a KU doctoral candidate in atmospheric science, is using aircraft data and machine learning to analyze data, looking for trends and patterns that could help improve your weather forecast. Click the headline above to listen to the Research Matters podcast on Kansas Public Radio featuring Nielsen's work.

We’ve launched a new Instagram account, @ResearchatKU, dedicated to facilitating and celebrating KU research that is bolstering Kansas and bettering the world. Follow for updates, kudos and engaging stories about Jayhawk scholars, creators and innovators. 

The KU Center for Technology Commercialization (KUCTC) continues to level up its outreach and education efforts across KU’s campuses.

Executive Director Cliff Michaels and Licensing Associate Taylor Escher recently delivered presentations to faculty in the School of Engineering on the Lawrence campus and graduate students in the Department of Cancer Biology at the Medical Center campus. Michaels’ presentation, “What Academic Innovators Need to Know about IP & Tech Transfer,” provided a comprehensive overview of the Bayh-Dole Act, the tech transfer process and the important role of federal research funding in academic innovation. Escher's presentation, “The Basics of Intellectual Property & Technology Transfer,” highlighted the importance of intellectual property rights, the distinct types of IP and KU's tech transfer process.

Key takeaways

These efforts reinforce KUCTC’s commitment to engaging and educating the KU community on the value of intellectual property and various pathways to commercialization.

Interested in learning more about working with KUCTC? Visit KUCTC's website or email kuctc@ku.edu to schedule a presentation for your department or group.

KU researchers are supporting sustainable irrigation with satellites, studying muscle and bone adaptation to physical training, improving career readiness among justice-involved women, examining challenging eating behaviors in children with autism, and more — all with the aid of external funding awarded in April and May.  

Behind every successful award are teams of KU research support staff who help investigators identify opportunities, prepare and submit complicated proposals under strict deadlines, help manage finances and compliance for funded projects, and more. They are the unsung heroes of KU research, greasing the wheels of innovation and discovery.

In each issue of KU Discoveries, we shine a spotlight on a research support staff member deemed particularly outstanding by colleagues. Click the button below this month's story to nominate a deserving candidate from any unit on campus.

Nellie Kassebaum | Research Development Specialist | Institute for Policy & Social Research

Social scientists often have insights that can solve problems in partnership with communities, but they need funding to deploy these solutions. Nellie Kassebaum is one of many staff members who help KU researchers secure those funds.

Kassebaum is a research development specialist at the Institute for Policy & Social Research, one of KU’s 11 designated research centers. Her time at KU began as an undergraduate student, where she earned a degree in English before completing a master’s in public health at Colorado State University. After working as a COVID-19 contact tracer and research assistant, Kassebaum returned to KU in 2023.

In her current role, Kassebaum supports principal investigators throughout the grant application process. This is especially true in the pre-award phases that determine whether the researcher earns the funding.

“Nellie has a great eye for detail and an unwavering commitment to excellence. She will always go the extra mile on a project,” said Carrie Caine, associate researcher at IPSR.

Kassebaum supported KU’s Phase I and Phase II applications to the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator, which funded research related to water quality and quantity in Kansas. IPSR researchers worked with partners within and beyond the university to install sensors in water wells and build an online dashboard that published data from those sensors for city water officials and state agency staff to help conserve Kansas’s water resources.

The project also provided unique learning opportunities for students. Undergraduate mechanical engineering students designed the sensors that monitored harmful algal blooms in state water wells. Data science students helped create the dashboard.

“Working with Nellie is always so reassuring,” said Will Duncan, assistant research professor in economics, who led the project. “She goes above and beyond preparing the documents and helping guide the timeline when submission materials should be ready. She feels like an active collaborator in the proposals, and I always feel like she deserves more credit.”

INTERNAL FUNDING

New Faculty Research Development Awards are designed to help new faculty accelerate their scholarship and start building a sustainable research program soon after their arrival on campus.  

Congratulations to the spring 2025 recipients:

This program is on pause until further notice. 

GENERAL

On June 24, KU IT will implement a change that adds extra protection against denial-of-service attacks to the KU network by limiting rapid, repeated connection attempts from external sources. 

Most students, faculty and staff will not notice any impact. The change only affects connections that are initiated from outside the KU network and target internal systems. Normal internet use and connections initiated from within KU — including browsing websites or accessing systems inside or outside KU, will not be affected. 

Researchers or others who rely on high-volume external connections may notice some changes. If this update may affect your work, contact your IT support staff or email IT security at itsec@ku.edu. 

RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION

The University of Kansas has received its new federally negotiated facilities & administrative (F&A) rate. Due to unforeseen delays in the negotiation process, the finalized F&A agreement has not yet been officially signed, though the agreement shows an effective date of July 1, 2024.

All new rates are effective from July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2028:

New proposals and competing renewals: The applicable new F&A rate must be used on all new and renewal proposals submitted after the new rates have been published unless limited by written sponsor policies, regardless of whether the sponsor is federal or non-federal. Please note that higher thresholds for equipment and the portion of subawards not subject to F&A are effective July 1, 2025 and are currently being used when preparing proposal budgets.

Current awards and non-competing continuations: Currently active awards will not be affected by the new rates unless the project enters a new competitive cycle. Those projects with “out years” already identified in the original award budgets will continue to use the applicable F&A rate in effect at the time of the original first-year award. This follows federal regulations that require the same rate to be used during the life of the sponsored project. The federal government defines “life” as the period of time awarded in a competitive cycle. 

New awards: Some proposals submitted before the publication of the new F&A rates may still reflect the previous rates. For federally funded awards, the Office of Research will maintain the originally proposed direct costs and will not adjust the budget to accommodate the updated rate. For non-federal awards, an adjustment request will only be made to the sponsor if the increase in F&A costs exceeds $1,000. If the sponsor does not approve the adjustment, the originally proposed rate will be applied when setting up the award.

Federal policy updates: A number of federal agencies — including the National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and Department of Defense — have proposed a 15% cap on indirect costs for federally funded research grants. This policy change would significantly reduce the amount of indirect costs research institutions can recover, impacting ongoing research programs and infrastructure.

However, enforcement of these limitations has been temporarily halted. A U.S. district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against NIH’s implementation of the policy on March 5. Additional lawsuits challenging the policy have been filed by multiple states, universities and research associations. As legal proceedings continue, federally negotiated rates remain in effect. We will continue monitoring federal policy developments and provide updates as necessary.

As federal policymakers continue to explore dramatic changes to how university research is funded, a presentation titled "Understanding Research Grant Indirect/Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Costs and a Strategy for Change” helps interpret a key part of the discussion. The video is available on the Association of American Universities website. 

Since April, the Joint Associations Group (JAG) on Indirect Costs has been working to develop new models for funding indirect costs on federal research grants as potential replacements for the current F&A reimbursement model. Read the latest update on JAG's work.

Award delays have become more common in the current funding environment. When an expected award is held up, a provisional account can be helpful to ensure continuity for ongoing work that is pending additional time and funds. When requesting a provisional account, please use the latest Provisional Request Form (.pdf).

This latest revision includes a signature line for an additional responsible financial approver and refined certification language to ensure units have adequate financial resources and fully understand the responsibility related to establishing a provisional account.

As anticipated, KU has enacted a new policy on the Prohibition of Involvement in Malign Foreign Talent Recruitment Program. To ensure university compliance with the federal requirement in the CHIPS & Science Act prohibiting collaboration with malign foreign talent recruitment programs, all individuals designated as senior/key persons on proposals must certify they are not party to a malign foreign talent recruitment program (MFTRP). This policy does not prohibit international collaborations. Please review the full policy for important definitions.

Additionally, the National Science Foundation recently announced a new certification requirement regarding MFTRP and has indicated that PIs and co-PIs with more than one active award made on or after May 20, 2024 will be required to complete this certification annually. Impacted PIs and co-PIs will be prompted to complete the MFTRP certification after signing into Research.gov. We expect NSF to release additional information, including FAQs, and we will share this with the KU research community when available. For questions about this new certification, please contact your AMS representative.

As a reminder, the U.S. Department of Energy has the following guidelines regarding malign foreign talent recruitment programs:

The National Institutes of Health has published a decision matrix (.pdf) for assessing potential foreign interference for covered individuals or senior/key personnel, outlining their guidance regarding participation in malign foreign talent recruitment programs.

Per this document, “Principal investigators and key personnel on NIH awards may participate in foreign research grants and/or foreign employment but, as described recently by OSTP (.pdf), may not participate in malign foreign talent recruitment programs. They must disclose all domestic and foreign research activities to NIH [via JIT other support reporting] and submit copies of foreign grants, agreements, and contracts to NIH (NIH GPS 2.5.1)."

Questions? Comments? Content suggestions?
Mindie Paget  |  Office of Research  |  mpaget@ku.edu

KU Office of Research
Strong Hall | 1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045

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