Ali Abedi, UWM’s new Vice Provost for Research, stepped into the role in June and will help steer the future of UWM’s research enterprise while helping faculty find and fund impactful work. His faculty home is in the Electrical Engineering department in the College of Engineering & Applied Science.
Abedi joins UWM from the University of Maine, where he served as Associate Vice President for Research and was a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Over his 29 years in academia and industry, he’s helped secure more than $43 million in research funding as a principal or co-investigator, with individual awards as large as $20 million from agencies like NASA, NIH, and NSF.
His own research focuses on wireless sensing – technology that gathers information in one place, sends it elsewhere, and uses it to make decisions. He’s led projects in wireless communications and sensor networks with applications ranging from environmental and structural monitoring to space exploration and biomedical devices.
While currently not conducting research in his own lab, he said he is eager to collaborate with others in looking for creative ways to apply wireless sensing concepts to new fields. Laura Otto sat down with him for an interesting conversation.
Why did you want to come to Milwaukee at this moment in higher education?
Everybody said this is the worst time to start a job like this because of all the federal changes. But if I’m going to challenge myself, this might be actually a good time because I think I have some experience that can help faculty. At the same time, there are a lot of compliance issues and federal challenges, so I aim to work as a team to overcome some of these. I think there’s so much potential to move forward here at UWM.
How can we do the same amount of research with fewer resources?
I view my role here at the research office as the convener of people.
We need to convince industry and provide a process for them so they will see us as the best place for them to do their R&D. So that’s one of my goals – to try to work with the engineering, sciences, and other programs to bring in the local industry to us. With [a centralized] approach, if one person leaves the team, the relationship with the company doesn’t crumble.
“We need to convince industry and provide a process for them so they will see us as the best place for them to do their R&D. So that’s one of my goals – to try to work with the engineering, sciences, and other programs to bring in the local industry to us. With [a centralized] approach, if one person leaves the team, the relationship with the company doesn’t crumble.”
Engineering is definitely one of the big players in this area, but we also need to think about teams working together across disciplines rather than a single investigator.
Why is the cross-disciplinary aspect important?
I’ve already identified several of faculty members who are doing very amazing things in a variety of areas. Now they need to go to the next level.
Building interdisciplinary teamshelps faculty members use their knowledge in ways they might not have thought of working alone. Often those topics that they have already spent research time on have different applications in another field.
Today’s problems are so complex we really need to build teams of faculty from multiple colleges, multiple research centers, and work with multiple companies. We need to connect all of these things in a shareable way. It’s a model that federal agencies advocate.
Others have tried to do this, but the university’s financial model makes it challenging.
Yes, but if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you cannot expect different results.
UWM uses a unique model, which returns 80% of the indirect costs for the research to the host college. But very few institutions are using this approach.
Instead, we should keep a portion of that centrally to be able to support faculty who collaborate across colleges.
The programs we put together in Maine offered more money to projects that included two or three faculty from multiple colleges. The intent was the collaboration would bring in follow-on money. Then, part of the growing proceeds would go back to the campus.
The resources will come if we show improvement. I’m sure the Board of Regents will look at us very differently if they see there’s a culture change here in terms of productivity.
Interdisciplinary also is popular with students, correct?
Yes, and it also helps with the retention. I used to run the undergraduate research center at my previous institution for many years. Right before accepting this job, we had finished the tracking of 500 students over the years.
We found that those who went through a research experience – almost over 98% of them – graduated with a degree. But for those who did not have the research experience, the retention rate was 60%.
It mirrors other studies on the topic which determined that, as soon as students come and work with a faculty member, no matter in what discipline, it gives them a sense of belonging to the university, helps them feel that people rely on them, and that their role on a research team makes them more motivated in their studies.
“Dr. Abedi brings a collaborative perspective to an all-campus research agenda,” said Andy Graettinger, associate dean for research in the college. “Our college stands to benefit greatly as we weave our faculty’s engineering and computer science expertise across campus under his guidance.”