Vice Chancellor for Research Art Ellis promotes a culture of innovation and collaboration at UC San Diego. He is an internationally renowned chemist who is known for his leadership in advancing scientific discoveries and communicating new knowledge for real-world application. Ellis is responsible for overseeing an extensive research enterprise, as UCSD is one of the top research institutions in the nation and its research is among the most highly cited in the world. He is also focusing on new models of collaborative research and partnerships, including initiatives with the international community. Here, Ellis talks about UCSD’s research mission and the importance of interdisciplinary research.

Ellis: UC San Diego has a well-deserved reputation as an engine of discovery.  We’re in the business of creating and communicating new knowledge across the great breadth of traditional scholarly disciplines, as well as in emerging interdisciplinary fields.  Our world-class scholars, assisted by the talented students who come to UC San Diego, make exciting advances on a daily basis in laboratories, offices and studios across campus.  In turn, these advances often lead to new concepts and technologies that benefit society by contributing to national security, a robust economy, higher standards of health, a sustainable environment, and an improved quality of life for our citizens.  Because we engage our students as partners in this process of knowledge creation, we prepare them to make their own contributions and to be future leaders of our society.  

Ellis: In a word, we need resources. Remaining competitive among the great research universities requires us to continue to recruit outstanding staff and students, and to ensure that they have the wherewithal – the infrastructure, equipment, and facilities - that it takes to stay at the leading edge of research.  Our nearly completed capital campaign will be a huge help.  Our office has a Government Research Relations unit that assists us in staying abreast of federal and state research funding opportunities, and we work with External Relations to identify resources that might be obtained from foundations and other private funding sources. 

Ellis: UC San Diego is regarded as one of the great research universities because it has so many areas of strength.  From the natural sciences and engineering, to social sciences and arts and humanities, we have extraordinary scholars and students.   We’ve also provided leadership in many areas of interdisciplinary research, with climate science and neuroscience as good examples.   

Ellis: Many important research problems span traditional disciplinary boundaries and require teams of individuals with complementary expertise in order to make significant progress.  For example, we have a project supported by the National Institutes of Health that is applying the tools of nanotechnology to cancer research.  This project has brought together researchers from fields like health sciences, chemistry, and engineering in state-of-the-art laboratories.  The San Diego Supercomputer Center and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) are examples of Organized Research Units, administered by our office, that specifically promote interdisciplinary collaboration.  Some of the Calit2 staff members are helping us develop tools that will enable our researchers to identify potential collaborators.  We anticipate that these “speed dating” tools will enable teams of researchers to nucleate rapidly around emerging research opportunities and help us create a more agile research enterprise.

Ellis: The development of knowledge management tools is a new initiative with significant potential impact on research. We live in an age where technologies, like databases and visualization tools, are allowing us to track the creation and diffusion of knowledge essentially in real time and across the globe.  (Click here to see an example of a knowledge map that illustrates how traditional disciplines are currently connected to one another.)  Our office is working with the campus to harness tools like these so that we can make the best possible investments as we recruit staff members, acquire research facilities, and integrate research, education, and public service.  These tools will allow our scholars to form new partnerships, locate resources, and identify emerging areas of opportunity.  We think that they have the potential to create completely new paradigms for conducting research.   

Another key initiative is the expansion of undergraduate research.  Our office would like to see all undergraduates at UC San Diego have an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly project while they are enrolled here.  In today’s era of globalization, understanding what it means to create new knowledge should be a core competency.  In collaboration with the Offices of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, we have launched a program to enable freshmen to become involved in research when they first arrive on campus.  A related effort encourages our students to communicate the value of research to them by making video clips.

We also plan to develop research projects in which the community can participate under the rubric of “citizen research.”  Examples include distributed computing where screensavers are used for calculations and the collection of environmental data that can be pooled and analyzed.

At an administrative level, our office has several large units – Animal Care and Welfare programs, the Office of Contract and Grant Administration (OCGA), and Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Services (TechTIPS) – that support research on an institutional scale.  We are using existing campus advisory groups or establishing them to ensure that we are serving the campus as effectively as possible.  

Ellis: Our campus has a rich history in this area.  In fact, the contributions of Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling helped to put environmental sustainability on the international radar screen.  More recently, several Scripps scientists participated in the preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.  To promote broader campus involvement, Chancellor Fox launched the Environment and Sustainability Initiative (ESI) under the leadership of Charles Kennel, Paul Linden, and Lisa Shaffer.  The ESI brings together experts from across the campus to address key issues related to environment and sustainability.  By marshalling our resources, we anticipate being able to make progress on topics ranging from bio-fuels to geo-engineering to “cap and trade” policies.  We intend to partner with the San Diego region in this effort, as there is great potential for creating a “clean-tech” industrial base in our community, as was done with the biotechnology and telecommunications industries.  There are also excellent opportunities for working with colleagues in Mexico and in other parts of the world through international partnerships in which we participate.

Ellis: Research is a dynamic process, and traditional disciplines are increasingly recognizing new opportunities for themselves by using concepts and tools developed outside of their disciplines.  An area like stem cell research, for example, is being investigated not just by health scientists, but by engineers who study interactions of stem cells with various materials, and by humanists who are considering ethical implications.  Nanotechnology, in which matter is imaged and manipulated on a scale of 1-100 nanometers, can be applied to virtually all areas of science and is attracting interest from social scientists, artists, and humanists.  Motion capture studios are allowing dance movements to be digitized and analyzed to better understand their aesthetic qualities. 

One of our office’s visions for the future is that our researchers will have a screensaver that presents their area of scholarship, and they will be able to watch the map change in real time as new papers and patents appear in the literature.  They might even be notified by wiki notes that tell them their work is suddenly connected to some new area they had not foreseen!  In short, the traditional walls between disciplines are quickly disappearing and being replaced by bridges that are allowing entirely new fields of scholarship to be born.

Ellis: As a public university, we recognize that we have an obligation to make investments that benefit society.  Our research enterprise, which is a source of tremendous intellectual capital, is well positioned to move ideas into products that can improve the lives of our citizens.  Our TechTIPS unit is working with the campus to make intellectual property a core competency.  We will be enhancing our investments in early stage commercialization infrastructure across the campus and in education to promote a culture of innovation.  As creation and management of intellectual property become a more integral part of our mission, I think it will be easier for our UC San Diego stakeholders to see that research is the bedrock on which discovery and innovation flourish.

Ellis: After having served at the National Science Foundation for four years as director of its chemistry division, I wanted to move back to a research university in an administrative position.  More specifically, I was eager to work with a great campus to help define the research enterprise of a modern research university.   As I learned more about UC San Diego and met the exceptional team that Chancellor Fox and Senior Vice Chancellor Chandler have assembled, the more convinced I became that this is where I want to be.  It’s hard for me to imagine a better place to be a Vice Chancellor of Research.

Ellis: A chronic problem for the campus has been the operation and maintenance of core facilities that provide specialized instrumentation for the campus.  To address this problem we have assembled an ad hoc working group of knowledgeable, distinguished faculty who are identifying models that will provide dynamic, sustainable structures for core facilities.  We hope to roll these out soon.  A second challenge has been the Organized Research Units (ORUs), which support interdisciplinary research.  Our office provides stewardship for the ORUs, which number approximately two dozen and span a wide range of sizes and fields.  We have established a joint Senate-Administration Task Force to study our ORUs and determine what changes, if any, need to be made to ensure that we are making the best possible investments in them.  It is also an opportunity to make sure we are supporting campus-wide efforts, for example, to promote technology transfer, foster international collaborations, and be more inclusive in providing leadership opportunities.

Ellis: Before I arrived at UC San Diego, I was aware of its well-deserved reputation for excellence in research and for being an entrepreneurial campus.  I hadn’t appreciated until I arrived, however, just how nimble and forward-looking the campus is.  UC San Diego is not tethered by tradition and is able to move aggressively to respond to new opportunities that arise.  We have extraordinary talent and leadership at this campus in so many areas of scholarship and administration, and a high level of collegiality that allows team-based projects to be successful.  I would say the same thing about our Office of Research Affairs; we have a superb staff that has been invaluable in redefining our office to focus on research. 

Ellis: For me, it is a fascinating intellectual challenge to pose questions that are chemically interesting, to predict what the answers will be, and then to design and conduct experiments to see whether I am right.  There are an endless number of these questions that are only limited by one’s imagination.  One of the joys of research for me has been involving students who share this quest for new knowledge.  Watching them develop into independent thinkers, researchers and leaders has been an immensely gratifying experience.