NSU Horizons Winter 2008 - 2009

of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute as the director of technol- ogy planning and assessment. In 1995, Margules became UM’s as- sistant vice provost for technology transfer and industry research. The latter position at UM required him to transform research ideas into products with commercial appeal. He hit the jack- pot when a UM researcher and his two Venezuelan colleagues discovered a method to revolutionize the way biopsy specimens are processed. The trio found a way to use microwave energy to process specimens in hours, instead of days, so patients could get their results much quicker. Margules and his team helped the researchers get patents for their discovery, license their method, and market the final product. It was a commercial success. Luis Glaser, Ph.D., who was UM’s provost and executive vice president during most of Margules’s tenure, said Margules was able to organize what was then a disorganized technology transfer system at the Coral Gables-based university. “He created a process by which we identified things that we wanted to look at,” said Glaser, who was Margules’s former supervisor. Margules’s reputation for identifying and promoting research has been noticed throughout Florida. Jack Sullivan, CEO of the Florida Research Consortium, calls Margules a “research leader.” Sullivan, whose organization is a statewide public-private group that advocates for more research at Florida’s universities, said that Margules is committed to helping shape legislation that benefits research and is instrumental in pro- moting research conferences throughout Florida. “Gary [Margules] is a dynamic leader who will do great things for the research and commercialization enterprise at Nova South- eastern University,” Sullivan said. Coming to NSU Margules’s accomplishments soon caught the attention of NSU’s leaders. His name was familiar to Ray Ferrero, Jr., NSU president, who felt the university needed someone with a strong expertise in technology transfer to help NSU grow into one of the region’s most significant research centers. Buoyed by research dollars, Ferrero saw many palpable ideas at the university that would lead to products. Margules, he thought, would be the perfect fit in NSU’s research master plan. “I felt it was time for the university to have somebody who was, in fact, charged with two responsibilities in the area of research— to foster research in the various academic centers and be monitor- ing and accounting for it,” Ferrero said. Fred Lippman, R.Ph., Ed.D., chancellor of NSU’s Health Professions Division, calls Margules a future thinker. “He looks beyond today and into the future for an opportunity to create collaborative research partnerships with multiple numbers of new corporate and intellectually superior research institutions,” said Lippman, adding that NSU already enjoys agreements with the Scripps Research Institute. 19 horizons A Presidential Research Initiative By Julie Levin Ten years ago, Ray Ferrero, Jr., J.D., Nova Southeastern University president, made a bold move to stimulate research throughout the univer- sity. Working with the university’s Board of Trustees, Ferrero created the President’s Faculty Research and Development Grant, an award program that helps promote new and existing faculty research by awarding up to $10,000 per recipient. The board members approved $2 million as seed money for the presi- dent’s new initiative. Since then, 466 faculty members and 59 students have shared 175 awards totaling more than $1.6 million. “It was the right time to foster those initiatives, and they have been highly successful,” Ferrero said. The awards have been used to conduct groundbreaking research in areas such as cancer, AIDS/HIV, mental health, autism, writing and lit- erature, and brain injuries. Grant money also included interdisciplinary research to promote project collaboration among researchers from NSU’s 16 different academic units. One of those collaborative researchers is Jeffrey Kibler, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at NSU’s Center for Psychological Studies, who has been awarded two president’s grants, and is a co- investigator on a third. The second of his two grants, a $10,000 award given this year, is an interdisciplinary study Kibler is conducting with Mindy Ma, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. The pair is working on a project that examines teasing, self- concept, and locus of control among overweight children. “These grant funds bring together talented people from across the university,” Kibler said. In addition to advancing faculty research, the president’s grant also offers research opportunities for students such as Kavita Joshi, M.S., who serves as a co-investigator on Kibler’s grant. “This provides an exceptional opportunity for students to get experience with the grant writing process and support their own research,” he said. Like Kibler, many faculty members compete each spring for the grants by submitting proposals, which are then read by a panel of 50 fac- ulty members. The panel looks for several criteria, such as whether the project is deemed scholarly and represents a new or expanded activity for the university. Special attention is given to activities that incorporate an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. Hui Fang Huang “Angie” Su, Ed.D., professor of mathematics education at NSU’S Fischler School of Education and Human Services, has received several grants for projects including Project A+, or Autism + Mathematics = Communication. “It provided us with the seed money to start this important research,” Su said. “Our collaboration experts from the Baudhuin Preschool at the Mailman Segal Institute for Early Childhood Studies and the College of Pharmacy provided valuable resources, input, and statistical analysis that contributed greatly to the outcome of the project.” The grant has also provided seed money for many faculty members who were able to expand their research budgets by obtaining other grants. After the first six years of the president’s grant, faculty winners were able to secure 16 non-NSU research grants totaling more than $1.2 million. The president’s grant has also led to 174 academic presentations, 86 publica- tions and book chapters, and 30 submitted research proposals. “The grants are an incredible value to the community, but particularly to the creation of new knowledge coming out of NSU,” said Fred Lippman, R.Ph., Ed.D., chancellor of NSU’s Health Professions Division. n Continued on page 43