Top UConn leaders want to spend $46 million to hire 10 new research, innovation and entrepreneurship faculty and provide them new lab space and equipment, as part of an effort to ramp-up the school’s research and startup efforts.
UConn’s Academic Affairs and Research, Entrepreneurship and Innovation committees made that recommendation Wednesday during a virtual meeting; the full Board of Trustees will vote on the measure at its March 30 meeting.
UConn Provost Dr. Carl Lejuez, who made a presentation to the committees along with Interim President Radenka Maric, said “we have to be competitive in how we bring people here.”
The university said it would draw from a wide pool of individuals in order to get the top researchers it wants.
The proposal calls for about $46 million to be used to hire the individuals, as well as for things like lab space and equipment. Those new hires and the equipment would be paid via state bond funds over the next five years. The state Bond Commission would still need to sign off on that funding.
In addition, under the plan, the university would foot the bill for salaries, equipment and lab space in the sixth year and beyond.
The goal, Lejuez said, is for the individuals who are hired to develop startups and allow for creating “an ecosystem that further generates additional opportunities for other faculty to learn how to be entrepreneurial in this way and how to think about commercialization.”
Those new hires would be studying in various fields, the university said, including biomedical sciences and engineering; clean and renewable energy; cybersecurity; genomics; and sustainable agriculture, among others.
The investment coincides with the school’s efforts to ramp-up the amount of annual research funding it attracts from outside sources, including the federal government. Maric recently told the Hartford Business Journal that UConn can reach its goal of hitting $500 million in annual research funding in the next five years.
