Basic Sciences Strategic Plan Accomplishments

Action Items

1. Ongoing – In partnership with UW Health, create an environment that supports a sense of belonging for all.
2. Ongoing – Increase the recruitment of faculty from underrepresented* groups.

Action Items

1. ✅ Achieved – Launched Interdisciplinary Biomedical and Health Sciences Consortium (IBHSC) in 2025

Action Items

1. ✅ Achieved – In alignment with campus and school goals, develop program to train and retain underrepresented* postdocs as faculty.
2. ✅ Achieved – Develop survey for postdocs to determine reasons for short average tenure within SMPH/UW–Madison.
3. Ongoing – Enhance mental health and wellness support for graduate students and postdocs.
4. Ongoing – Develop approaches to increase the number of postdoctoral and graduate trainees from underrepresented* groups.
5. Ongoing – Develop relationships with local community groups and national organizations featuring recruitment programs for underrepresented* groups.
6. ✅ Achieved –  Create new awards for SMPH learners

Action Items

1. Identify faculty directors of research core clusters recently established by the Dean’s office and task them to understand staffing/equipment needs within each core cluster.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 1: Identify directors of individual or groups of core clusters and organize quarterly meetings between them and the newly recruited Senior Director of SMPH Cores.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 2: Develop an investigator survey to obtain data on the frequency of use, timeliness, expense, and overall quality of cores (including questions to understand why investigators may have chosen to avoid the use of one or more core facilities).
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 3: Task core cluster directors to define resources and staff/equipment needs that exist within individual research cores.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 4: Review requests for core augmentation (staff/equipment), based on core cluster directors’ recommendations and determine cost sharing models to be responsive.
   • Ongoing – Goal 5: Develop a standardized approach to address requests for funding to support instrument acquisition, including requests for matching support requested to enhance the competitiveness of extramural and intramural grant applications.
   • Ongoing – Goal 6: Develop approaches to facilitate interactions among investigators, staff, and trainees (ie., core facility open houses, collaborative training opportunities, etc.).
2. Develop a training module for core facility staff and associated administrative units on culture/customer service, as well as a mechanism for cores/units to receive feedback.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 1: Facilitate more centralization of SMPH core facility administration and operations through the recruitment of a new Senior Director of SMPH Cores.
   • Ongoing – Goal 2: Identify or create one or more training module(s) for core facility and administrative staff centered on inclusive customer service.
   • Ongoing – Goal 3: Develop plans to disseminate training modules and determine frequency of their completion.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 4: Develop questionnaires to enable faculty, staff and learners to provide feedback to core facility staff and administrative units.
3. Promote research core facility open-houses and training events to engage new users and facilitate interaction among investigators. 
   • Ongoing – Goal 1: Determine core facilities that would be well positioned to host open house events.
   • Ongoing – Goal 2: Develop ways to expose core users to new technologies.
4. Identify targeted opportunities that leverage our emerging strengths.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 1: Define standardized processes by which research cores can be responsive to RFAs to support instrument acquisition.

Action Items

1. Ongoing: Develop metrics to measure, compare and update external funding activities in SMPH, including multi-PI funding.
2. ✅ Achieved: Maintain an updated list of NIH Faculty Councils and encourage leaders at UW–Madison SMPH to participate in these important activities.
3. ✅ Achieved: Create professional events that foster social connections

Action Items

1. ✅ Achieved: Clarify the use of the integrated packet as a way to apply for promotion for the Biological Sciences Divisional Committee.
2. ✅ Achieved: Incorporate social impact and belonging work in SMPH promotion guidelines as appropriate.
3. ✅ Achieved: Clearly define the importance and benefits of service and outreach to the university, the advancement of science, and the well-being of Wisconsin communities and beyond.
4. Ongoing: Improve mentoring and promotions oversight committee functions in SMPH departments.
5. ✅ Achieved: Incorporate the importance of quality mentoring in SMPH promotion guidelines as appropriate.

Action Items

1. Ongoing: Together with the Basic Sciences Strategic Leadership Committee, create a task force to understand the research landscape in SMPH and identify areas in which philanthropic resources should/could be raised.
2. Ongoing: Collaborate with UW Foundation to connect SMPH principal investigators and training programs with foundations having interests and goals that align with PI research interests.
3. Ongoing: Create and implement basic science philanthropy development plan.

Action Items

Action item 1: Develop new mechanisms for identifying and then recognizing outstanding achievement by faculty and staff.

• Ongoing – Goal 1: Develop metrics that define outstanding achievement in research, innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Ongoing – Goal 2: Create a process to regularly review salaries of high-achieving faculty, compare these to salaries to departmental and school scales at similar professorial rank, and recommend increases when appropriate.
• Ongoing – Goal 3: Develop, implement and evaluate new or existing processes for nominating SMPH faculty for national awards.
• Ongoing – Goal 4: Annually communicate with high achieving faculty members via letters from the Dean congratulating them on their success and thanking them for their contributions to the research and research training missions of the school.
• Ongoing – Goal 5: Develop material compensation to recognize achievement.

Action item 2: Actively engage departments, centers and faculty to ensure that highly qualified faculty and staff are nominated for national awards made on the basis of professional achievement.

• Ongoing – Goal 1: Meet with the SMPH Office of Faculty Affairs and Development to determine the status of school-wide initiatives in this area.
• Ongoing – Goal 2: If these initiatives are already under way, provide support through active participation of faculty and staff in school-wide and departmental awards committees and by submitting nominations of deserving colleagues to these committees.

Action item 3: Create new awards for SMPH faculty and staff.

• Ongoing – Goal 1: Appoint a committee to define new awards for SMPH faculty who demonstrate excellence in mentoring learners, teaching, research, and service.
• ✅ Achieved – Goal 2: Appoint a committee to define new awards for SMPH staff who demonstrate excellence in leadership, service, teaching, and research.

Action Items

1. ✅ Achieved: Work with and provide support for efforts to implement the data use agreement between SMPH and UW Health/other clinical partners.
2. Ongoing: Establish hybrid (HPC and cloud) environments for analysis of Omics and Imaging data, i.e., Platform R.

SMPH is integrating the work of this objective with the UW–Madison RISE AI initiative.

Action Items

1. Develop or improve methods, metrics, and tools needed to study root causes of health disparities.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 1: Facilitate establishment and growth of the Center for Health Disparities Research (CHDR).
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 2: Work with CHDR leadership to identify RFAs to which CHDR faculty could be responsive, particularly as collaborative teams.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 3: Identify and compile lists of investigators and clinical practitioners by research areas/interests, with the potential to form inter/multidisciplinary research teams to apply for grant funding.

Action Items

1. Facilitate the use of genomics and data analysis pipelines.
   • Ongoing – Goal 1: Facilitate efforts for genomics pipelines and analyses integrated across multiple departments and centers of UW–Madison, including the Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine (CHGPM) and the Biotechnology Center.
   • Ongoing – Goal 2: Expand UW–Madison human genomics footprint spanning infrastructure, training, and collaborative research through external grant mechanisms.
   • Ongoing – Goal 3: Work with CHGPM leaders to establish short- and long-range plans for CHGPM to catalyze human genomics at SMPH and UW–Madison, including the identification of programs and services that the center provides.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 4: Develop marketing strategies to promote the mission and goals of CHGPM, as well as the programs and services the center provides.
   • Ongoing – Goal 5: Collaborate with the academic health system to facilitate consent for genomics and biospecimen research, to integrate clinical genomics into electronic medical records (EMR), and to support clinical/translational research, including interventional studies.

Action Items

1. Identify targeted opportunities that leverage our emerging strengths.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 1: Develop new mechanisms to highlight RFAs to specific scientists (including multi-investigator teams) who would be highly competitive, particularly with appropriate administrative support for grant submission purposes.
   • Ongoing – Goal 2: Develop approaches to incentivize collaborations between investigators focused on the creation of new technologies and investigators working on specific pathogen/organism/disease states to spur new innovations.
   • ✅ Achieved (medRAMP was rebranded as medRISE: Research Investigator Support and Education) – Goal 3: Redesign the medRAMP website to better reflect its purpose and highlight key funding opportunities.
   • ✅ Achieved – Goal 4: Assess and potentially revise the funding model that supports the medRamp Grant Office to provide investigators administrative support for submission of large and complex grants (e.g., P & U grants, etc).
2. Ongoing: Scan campus for research areas of strength where new training grants could be awarded.

Action Items

1. ✅ Achieved: Expand our portfolio of industry partners.
2. Ongoing: Create a model for developing Center(s) of Excellence for industry studies specific disease/therapeutic areas that can be expanded and applied to other specialties.
3. Ongoing: Enhance the quality of community engagement interactions by SMPH faculty and staff.
4. Ongoing: Proactively align basic science researchers with potential clinical collaborators.