1.8: Research Facilities
Facilitate cutting-edge research through support of shared facilities Other Information:
The equipment and facilities needed to perform research often exceed what an individual faculty member can acquire, sustain,
or optimally utilize. This predicament has been largely limited to science and engineering; it is reflected by such facilities
as our Shared Materials Instrumentation Faculty, the NMR Center, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Institute for Genome
Sciences & Policy, the Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology Experimental Labs, and the Shared Cluster Computing
Resource. Today, however, as the Franklin Center's Technology Center makes clear, sophisticated, technology-intensive facilities
are needed in all disciplines for faculty research and scholarship. The creation and development of shared resources is often
difficult because of faculty preferences for dedicated facilities, the hesitancy of schools to subsidize one another, and
the lack of current financial mechanisms to provide an infrastructure for shared resource partnerships. Through the Faculty
Enhancement Initiative, however, the central administration will seek to provide leadership in developing the critical mass
of faculty in strategic areas needed to justify and sustain targeted core facilities, whether high end instrumentation for
science and engineering or multi-media visualization and digitization facilities for the arts and humanities. We will also
work to provide increased resources for critical, shared facilities, although faculty startup funds available through this
initiative can be used towards the purchase of shared instrumentation, potentially leveraging both school and external funding.
Future demand for shared resources is likely to increase, with near-term needs in science and engineering accentuated by current
climate of federal funding. The university cannot support all requests for shared facilities but will need to prioritize support
activities that bring distinction to our core values and strategic goals. To make such determinations, we will establish a
Shared Facilities Oversight Committee, reporting to the Vice Provost for Research, to define the process by which faculty
can create shared facilities, prioritize requests for such facilities, recommend the appropriate initial investment, and evaluate
proposed business plans to assure long-term viability.
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