Senior Vice Provost for Research

The senior vice provost for research (SVPR) is responsible for stewarding MIT’s research enterprise and fostering an outstanding research environment for MIT’s faculty, postdocs, research staff, and graduate students. The SVPR sets a strategic vision; enables major research initiatives that cut across the Institute, including through interdisciplinary labs/centers/institutes; and maintains a research administration, policy, and compliance infrastructure whose excellence matches that of MIT’s research itself.

The SVPR reports to the provost with a dotted-line reporting relationship with the president.

Essential functions

Research administration, operations, and engagement

• Oversee Research Administration Services (RAS), the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology and Transfer (OSATT), which includes OSATT Core, the Technology Licensing Office, and Corporate Relations, and additional offices and functions that support Institute research such as the International Scholars Office (ISchO), Postdoctoral Services, Research Administration Systems and Support, Research Development, and Cost Analysis. Work in partnership with vice provost for research computing and data (ORCD) to provide computational resources to the MIT research enterprise.
• Strengthen existing partnerships, and implement new engagements, with universities, industry, government, foundations, nationally and internationally.
• Act as the Institute’s representative at national labs and on national committees and communicate the state of the Institute’s research enterprise.

Interdisciplinary labs, centers, and institutes

• Provide oversight of interdisciplinary research laboratories, centers, and institutes, including but not limited to the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, the MIT Energy and Environmental Solutions Initiatives, the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences, and MIT.nano. Lab, center, and institute directors will report to the SVPR.
• Direct the allocation of institutional resources to support and catalyze interdisciplinary research and to support the enhancement of research facilities, instrumentation, and infrastructure.

Proposals and awards

• Connect faculty to funding opportunities and sponsors.
• Provide and oversee tools and resources to increase the MIT research community’s competitiveness.
• Uphold policies, procedures, and fiscal responsibilities of pre- and post- award activities.

Research conduct

• Oversee Research Compliance including research integrity, the Division of Comparative Medicine, the Committee on Animal Care (CAC), the Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and the Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES).
• Serve as a resource to faculty by assisting with research compliance requirements.
• Oversee research data security through Research Compliance.