New Research@MIT app

Dear colleagues,

To help streamline the administrative and financial management of MIT research portfolios and budgets, we are pleased to share with you today a new app-based tool, Research@MIT. This new app offers a single convenient view of key information drawn from MIT enterprise systems with one goal: to save you time.

The Research@MIT app arises from concerted efforts dating back several years. For example, MIT faculty and staff have long envisioned an application that would reduce the administrative burden of monitoring expenses on sponsored-research accounts. Principal investigators (PIs) need a means of direct visibility into their accounts in real time — as one PI dubbed it in an early survey, a kind of “Quicken for Professors.” Now, in Research@MIT, we have created that quick-view PI dashboard. Moreover, based on PI and research administrator feedback, we broadened this tool to provide a one-stop shop where researchers and DLCI administrator teams can manage a range of common needs.

In this first phase of its rollout, available to all PIs, Research@MIT enables you to view:

• Your research snapshot, including pending and funded awards
• Available funds for each of your active sponsored research awards, drilling down into categories of expenses incurred to date
• The status of your proposals submitted by MIT to potential sponsors
• Pending and approved human-subjects (COUHES) protocols
• The status of requested non-disclosure and data-use agreements (NDAs and DUAs)

Be sure to check out the “Helpful Information” section that provides additional direct links for your speedy access to the new NDA/DUA submission portal, COUHES Connect, OPA, and COI tools, and the Pivot-RP funding opportunity search engine — as well as FAQs for the Research@MIT app.

Further development is underway to expand and improve the features of the app on a rolling basis. In the near future, Research@MIT will incorporate:

• Other funds available to PIs (such as a PI’s discretionary funds)
• Proposals in development
• An invention disclosure interface, managed by the Technology Licensing Office (TLO)
• And other features to be shaped by your needs.

To download the app for your platform of choice, visit https://apps-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au.

All MIT PIs have full access to Research@MIT today. In addition, DLCI research administrators may access data within the app with approval from a Financial Primary Authorizer. This administrative view is currently available on iOS/MacOS, and will be added for Android and Windows later this month. Further information regarding departmental access is available on the VPR website.

We are grateful to MIT Information Systems & Technology and the Research Administration Systems and Support team in OVPR for their leadership and hard work on this project. We are also thankful to the many faculty and staff beta-testers across the schools and college who shared their time and feedback this summer, including faculty on the Ad Hoc Research Administration Faculty Advisory Committee. Their thoughtful and positive comments give us great confidence that Research@MIT will provide a valuable and trusted tool, lending new transparency and efficiency to MIT research administration. We hope you’ll agree.

We invite and welcome your thoughts: please send all comments and feature requests to research-app-feedback@mit.edu to inform future phases of the app’s development.

Sincerely,

Maria T. Zuber
Vice President for Research

Krystyn J. Van Vliet
Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Research