D.C. Research Office Honored

By Carl Marziali on October 2, 2009 7:44 AM

USC Executive Vice President and Provost C. L. Max Nikias and the university community honored the achievements of the USC D.C. Office of Research Advancement and its executive director Steven Moldin at a Town & Gown ceremony Sept. 22.

In presenting Moldin with a plaque commemorating three outstanding years, Nikias noted the office’s impressive batting average: 56 winning proposals out of 161 assembled and submitted with office involvement, for a total of over $130 million in federal research grants.

“That’s quite a track record,” Nikias said.

On average, federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy fund only one in 10 proposals.

Moldin’s office triples the odds of success with a simple strategy: Match the needs of federal agencies to resources at USC.

And do it with a leader who understands both sides of the research grant world. The provost praised Moldin for his energy, enthusiasm, scientific insight and “powers of persuasion.”

“We are lucky to have him,” he told the gathering of more than 100 researchers, administrators and friends of the office.

And USC is lucky to have such an office, said Randolph Hall, vice provost for research advancement, who oversees the office and works closely with Moldin. Hall praised Nikias’ vision in acting on a section of the 2004 strategic plan that called for USC to build alliances at all levels of government.

As Nikias pointed out, no other university has an equivalent office in the nation’s capital.

In a brief speech, Moldin thanked his staff of seven - some of whom, like Moldin, are Ph.D. scientists who previously served as program officers at a federal agency.

Moldin called his office “a conduit” for USC faculty seeking grants and research partnerships.

“I feel very privileged that we have outstanding faculty in many key areas,” he said. With Moldin’s guidance, several USC units that have not traditionally submitted proposals to the federal funding agencies did so: among them, the Fisher Museum of Art, the School of Architecture, the USC Thornton School of Music and the School of Cinematic Arts.

Faculty at the ceremony described Moldin as an expert assembler of research teams and as a talent scout with an eye for chemistry.

Before coming to USC, he was a program official at the National Institutes of Health for more than a decade. This tenure followed a career as a genetics researcher on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“He really understands how to network and how to put people together into teams that work,” said Carlos Pato, chair of psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“He finds opportunities that faculty wouldn’t usually think of,” said Maryalice Jordan-Marsh, associate professor of social work.

Those opportunities include partnerships with other prestigious schools or institutes, said Nikias, citing winning grant proposals that included investigators from the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Rutgers University.

The office’s biggest recent successes include:

• A $22 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for biomedical informatics research to a group headed by Carl Kesselman, noted computer scientist and director of the Center for Grid Technologies in the Information Sciences Institute of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering

• A $15.3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for one of several new Physical Science Oncology Centers to a team of noted researchers at several universities co-led by renowned oncologist David Agus of the Keck School of Medicine

• A $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense for robotics systems that can adapt to detect threats and intrusions, to Gaurav Sukhatme, professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering

• A $9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study genetic pathways in the brain, to co-investigators Pat Levitt, director of the Zilkha Neurogenetics Institute in the Keck School of Medicine, and James Knowles, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Moldin’s office is not USC’s only in Washington, D.C. His staff works hand in hand with the USC Office of Federal Relations, headed by Jennifer Grodsky. At the Town & Gown ceremony, Nikias praised Grodsky and Tom Sayles, vice president for government and community relations, for “outstanding work” on policy matters that directly affect the federal research-funding climate.

For more information on the two offices, visit http://dcresadv.usc.edu/ and http://www.usc.edu/federal

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