🔒Interim President Maric leads UConn’s efforts to become a top-flight research university

Competition among U.S. colleges to win an increasing share of the billions of dollars in federal and private research funding available annually has reached a fever pitch in recent years, as schools look to boost their reputation, recruit top talent and use the money to spur economic development, including potential startup companies.

UConn has put itself squarely in the middle of that battle, and has seemingly doubled down on efforts to raise its profile as a research university by recently naming Radenka Maric interim president.

Prior to the new role, the 55-year-old Maric oversaw UConn’s research efforts as vice president for research, innovation and entrepreneurship, and she’s not wasting time in making bold predictions.

She said UConn can reach its goal of hitting $500 million in annual research funding in the next five years; in 2019 former President Thomas Katsouleas predicted the school would reach that mark in a decade.

UConn is off to a good start, having earned a record $375.6 million in federal research grants in fiscal year 2021, up significantly from the previous year’s record of $285.8 million.

Maric, who spent years as a chemical and biomolecular engineering professor, has been a central player in those efforts, lobbying donors as well as state and federal officials for more funding (fundraising increased to a record high of $93.3 million in fiscal year 2021), and retaining and recruiting top research faculty.

For example, Maric spearheaded the recruitment of Fumiko Hoeft, a professor in UConn’s Department of Psychological Sciences and director of the Brain Imaging Research Center. Hoeft is a leading researcher on dyslexia, who said Maric is the reason she left the University of California, San Francisco, in August 2019.

“I was not looking for another job and I was very happy where I was,” Hoeft said. “Radenka was the main reason I came here. It was her presence and charisma and how down-to-earth she was and her willingness to listen that was powerful and really made me think that we can make changes [at UConn]. Her style blew me away.”

It didn’t hurt that Maric, who is fluent in four languages, spoke and wrote to Hoeft in Japanese, her native tongue.

Since arriving at UConn, Hoeft has doubled her research funding from $10 million to $20 million, she said.

Gov. Ned Lamont, who recently appointed Maric to Connecticut Innovations’ board of directors, said her work in research has been vital to both UConn and the state.

“Over the last several years, Radenka Maric has been instrumental in strengthening UConn’s research and innovation programs, which go hand-in-hand with our administration’s economic development and job growth goals,” he said.

Opportunities, challenges

Martin Van Der Werf, associate director of editorial and postsecondary policy for the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, said there are many reasons why universities seek to beef up their research funding.

“Research is widely celebrated and sought after in higher education as the highest demonstration of intellectual curiosity,” he said.

The hope is some of that research translates into new discoveries in medicine and other fields, yielding not only potential life-saving drugs but new companies that can grow jobs.

One major goal for schools looking to ramp up their research bona fides is to join the Association of American Universities (AAU), which is made up of 66 leading research colleges across the U.S., Van Der Werf said.

UConn is not currently an AAU member. Yale is the only Connecticut school in the association.

“Institutions that have large research budgets and reputations arguably have a better chance of attracting top professors, those who might enhance the reputation of a university,” Van Der Werf said. “The attraction of those top professors might, in turn, attract more donors to support a university.”

In some ways, UConn is in a prime position to become an East Coast answer to the Silicon Valley-adjacent Stanford University, and to give its in- and out-of-state neighbors — Yale, Harvard and MIT — a run for their money when it comes to earning research funding and midwifing new, innovative companies.

But UConn still has a long road to travel. For example, in 2020, Harvard and the University of Washington topped the list of most National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding, raking in $1.7 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively, according to U.S. News & World Report. UConn that year recorded $160.7 million in NIH research funding, ranking 42nd nationally.

UConn does rank first among New England public universities in external research funding and has some significant R&D infrastructure, including lab space and equipment, most of it supported by billions of dollars in taxpayer investment over recent decades.

There are challenges as well, including a multibillion-dollar unfunded pension liability that makes UConn a more expensive place for entrepreneurs to base their operations compared to other research universities.

It can also be expensive to attract and retain top talent, and further taxpayer investment in UConn can become a political hot potato at the state Capitol.

Maric said top schools watch closely where grant money is awarded and can be aggressive in trying to poach faculty. That’s why she said her No. 1 priority is retaining the school’s current roster of staff and researchers.

Maric said UConn can’t match the salaries of a Harvard, but has other ways to keep talented faculty.

“Other than salary, they want new equipment and more space to recruit students,” she said. “We can provide that, to some extent.”

Last year state lawmakers authorized $47 million in bond funding over five years for UConn to hire 10 new innovation faculty. Maric said the school is actively working on details of the plan and expects to submit it to the state legislature by April 1.

UConn wants to target researchers in areas such as data science, fintech, clean and renewable energy, genomics and advanced manufacturing — all sectors crucial to Connecticut’s economy, she said.

Startup efforts

As UConn boosts its research efforts, it will likely need to add more research and lab space to accommodate faculty and, hopefully, an increasing number of startups in the school’s Technology Incubation Program, Maric said.

Some of that work is already underway.

Maric noted that additional research space will be available at the new science quad at Storrs, which is expected to open this fall. There are also several renovation projects at various UConn properties that will expand lab space, she said.

Over the past 10 years about 50 startups have been birthed at UConn’s Technology Incubation Program (TIP), which provides lab space, equipment and advisory services to faculty and others looking to convert research and ideas into actual business ventures. Maric said UConn expects to double the number of startups in the next few years.

And there have been success stories. In 2020 TIP startups raised a record $420 million, an amount nearly equal to the funding earned over the previous four years combined.

Frequency Therapeutics, which is developing a drug-based therapy to restore hearing loss, raised $230 million that year, while Rallybio — a rare disease drug developer now based in New Haven — raised $167 million.

In 2021 TIP startups raised $170 million, the school said, and five new companies launched.

In addition, about a year ago UConn launched a new incubator space at its Stamford campus — TIP Digital — that focuses on helping artificial intelligence and machine learning startups grow their business in the state.

Thirteen startups have joined that program and about half are already generating revenue, Maric said. The companies, Maric added, have also collectively raised more than $3 million.

Another major focus area for Maric is climate change, she said.

The university has launched a climate lab with faculty and students who are looking into research and innovation when it comes to addressing the issue.

“Climate change is the pressing issue for generations to come, absolutely,” she said.