> We're just going to talk about your opinions, basically, on why you thought your proposal was successful, perhaps how you developed your team, those kinds of things.
> Okay. Yes, and background. So I've been on I think a total of five MURIs. I'm currently on three at the same time. One is about to end, so sort of two. I've only led one of those, partly because the past seven years, I've been a department head, and it was harder to initiate the whole process, and write proposals, and things like that. But the one I did lead, which was, you know, maybe, you know, several years ago now, but really, you know, I think it actually kind of started out, more or less, as a review paper. And actually, I was going to sort of recommend that as maybe thinking of a strategy. It's a little, it puts things a little bit longer out, but it doesn't even really have to be really a very scholarly review. I mean, it can be much more of a kind of a, you know, perspective type of review.
But put some people on it, you know, put some people on it who are leaders of the kind of neighboring areas maybe of what you're interested in. Those people could eventually become your team, right, or at least part of the team. And in this case, there was a, there's a, you know, review article that's published. It starts picking up lots of citations. You talk to program, you know, in this case, one of the program officers in the Navy Office of Naval Research was interested in the sort of general area because of, you know, that, their, that core program was involved. And okay, so there's some communications with that person about how to write a, some sort of call, some sort of description to compete for the MURIs, right. So the program officers, of course, really control this. The program officers write these descriptions of these MURIs, and then they hope, they compete for funding, you know, for those small proposals, right.
And that's sort of the whole key thing. You got to help that person, and they want them, right. They want to have MURIs. They want to have their program be bigger and have more influence. And, you know, their core program maybe doesn't actually ever get any more, get any bigger, and so if they want to do something new, they have to do it, you know, through, say, a MURI funding mechanism. So the whole thing is, you know, help them, you know, get something of interest, you know, funded within the MURI program. Then they put out the call, and you're sort of already positioned to be one of the most competitive.
> Could you talk a little bit about how you developed your team? Was it indeed an outgrowth of a review paper?
> Certainly parts of the team were the same as the review paper offers. This is definitely true. You know, I put together the team at that time. You know, Paul [assumed spelling] was on it, and, you know, and Paul had a close colleague at another, you know, another person that we brought on board. But all, you know, certainly all acknowledged experts in their, you know, very, very distinguished, you know, accomplished people in their, in these areas that we were putting together. So that's important. I think the negative of that, which I'm, you know, as a, you know, sort of in my more department head role, is that that means it often leaves out, you know, younger researchers, right. So do your faculty sometimes have a hard entry into this world, right? And so in the most recent MURI we put, I put together with some, you know, a group of people -- I didn't lead it, but I was a part of the team that sort of thought about who's going to participate and how we're going to do it -- we intentionally said we wanted to have at least one junior faculty member involved.
And we solicited basically among ourselves, and asked for advice from various senior people about who that should be, and then brought that person on board, you know, and that turned out to be a good process. I mean, we just kind of made a commitment among ourselves as we didn't want it to be just, you know, these MURIs to only being funding senior people and help bring along some people that we thought would be valuable additions.
> So would you be able to identify let's say the three things, the reasons why you thought your proposal was successful and succeeded where others didn't, and would team be one of the three reasons?
> Well, I mean, of course, we had already defined the top, helped define the topic, so that's number one. You're already leading the topic because that's how they got the idea in the first place. Yeah, and then the team I think is certainly number two. I'm not sure what else there really is besides--
> Okay.
> The topic and the team right now.
> Okay. So Gary [assumed spelling], would you like to talk a little bit about why you thought your proposal was successful?
> Sure. I'd be glad to. First of all, I'd like to thank the organizers for having this discussion today because I think it's a great idea. Thank you very much.
> Peter [assumed spelling] gets credit. Peter should--
> Okay. Good job, peter. And thank you all for coming today. My comments will be very similar to those of David's [assumed spelling], but different in just a couple of respects. The MURI topic that funded our group was a topic that originated out of AFOSR. That's the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. And the area's in lasers, laser physics, and in particularly in cooling lasers by an internal process, not a traditional thermal process. But my comments will be very similar to those for Dave. In our case, we did not know that the topic was coming. We were notified of it. I can't remember who it was that brought it to my attention. And the topic is in an area that I've worked for a number of years and know quite a few people who've worked in that area. So as David has already said, the two most important issues are the topic and the team.
We were in a position to compete for it because, well, for a number of reasons. One is that the program manager at AFOSR who put forth this topic is someone that I know very well, and I've been funded by AFOSR for close to 40 years. So being near a topic, as David was talking about, is the result I think of working in a particular field for a long time. There's no substitute, my friends, for being engaged in research with really great people and doing research that is of current interest and really is pioneering in the field. And I'm not speaking of myself when I say these things, but more of the team that was assembled.
So again, for young people in the audience that are thinking about this, you're doing the right things by being involved in professional societies, and meeting individuals who are the most distinguished in the field, and working with them whenever you can because then when a topic is issued by the Department of Defense and it happens to be an area that's close to you, you know the individuals upon whom you can call. And that leads me to the issue of the team. The way that I organized the team was simply to call these individuals. So it was a friend at Stanford that I've worked with before, another colleague at Clemson, Steve Rand at Michigan. These are the best people in the field, and I've told them all that they make me look good, so that's the key to surround yourself with people who make you look good.
And then you mentioned a young person. We were very fortunate that our own Pete Dragic in electrical and computer engineering, works in this area, has built quite a great reputation, and he's the youngest member of the team. So that's how it came to be. But I couldn't agree with you more. I started my career with the Department of Defense Naval Research Laboratory, and I know that there's pressure on program managers to, each year, to suggest topics that are exciting, will be exciting to the basic research community, but also are potentially a value to the Department of Defense. So, and they're people just like all of us. They answer to superiors, and superiors evaluate their performance, their ability to recognize developing areas in a field, and fund those areas, and see them develop. So it's a system that works very well.
> Great, thank you.
> Thank you.
> Paul.
> Great. My apologies for being here a few minutes late. So I've been involved in it before, but I've led two MURIs. And I think actually in a bit of a counter to what we've heard so far, the first MURI I led as an assistant professor. I was not involved in writing the topic. I became aware of the topic when I read the RFP, just like everyone else. And then looked at the topic and looked at the, what the PM had been involved with, and at that point, started assembling a team. Being very junior at the time -- I had been here I think three years -- you know, the team was, everyone was more senior. It was sort of me and the chairs is a good way to describe it in some sense. And actually, there was an associate professor, and then, you know, but I looked out and found, you know, at another university, a very established National Academy member who had had funding from DoD for a long time.
And then, you know, we put in a white paper that really was sort of our vision where laid out why the team was the right team to address the problem and why our vision, when it agreed with theirs, fine, and when it wasn't quite theirs, why that was even better. And that convinced them that we would write a full proposal. And at the full proposal, you're down to sort of one of three, and those were pretty good odds. And then I think whether you're part, whether you helped write the call or not, and you're in that one of three, I think you get a pretty fair shake.
> Yeah, I agree. That's right.
> So we made it through the first stage not because of my credibility at the time, but, you know, I think I picked really established leaders in the field. And I will also say that the PM was a relatively young PM at the time, so he had only been there about four years. And so he was, I think he's a year or two older than me, and so probably he was more open to this idea of bringing a new face in than someone who had a long, established portfolio. So what he was proposing was not in a core area of his. And it seemed unlikely to me that he had already handpicked the team of very senior people. So we went for it. The white paper's easy, you know. It's not that hard to put a three-pager. The second one, also I became aware of the call. After it came out, the topic, though, seemed to be one that was very close to an area that we could uniquely address -- "we" meaning a team that we could assemble.
And, you know, this was the example of mostly senior people the second time around, and it would've been great I think to have more real junior people, although we did have, you know, one or two assistant professors on the team. I will say, though, having a group of all senior, multiple ones have moved institutions. Several have moved to different countries, and it's been a lot less fun and a lot more administrative headaches the second time around. Again, when we went for the full proposal, in this case, I think there were three teams. There may have only been two. I'm not sure. And I know that at least one of the finalists self-destructed before the proposal submission. So for all I know, we were the only team [laughter] or we were one of a few teams, and I think the PM's preferred team was the one that self-destructed.
And that's because, again, it was -- and I know who they are. It doesn't matter. But I think that they had sort of assembled a vision that didn't really hold together. You know, these MURI calls are sort of half baked. You know, they're not, and so they had assembled to really respond exactly to this half-baked call. And in the end, that works for a white paper, and for a full proposal, it falls apart because the pieces don't work. And so I think that's the other part is, yes, you need to address the call, but in the two that we've done successfully, we have only addressed the call at the level that we feel is sort of we can really support scientifically, and in fact, one or two teams I've been involved with that I think tried to respond to the call and ignore scientific realities made it to the, past the white paper stage, but then the full proposal just doesn't, didn't work.
> So Paul, you sort of segued into administrative issues. So were there challenges with setting up so that the award comes in and the infrastructure had to be set up, presumably? Or was some of it in place already? And then execution of the projects?
> I mean, the first one was done through Beckman, who had the experience on running multi-investigator grants. The second one was done through the Material Science Department, which had a lot of experience in multi-investigator, multi-university grants. And so the, you know, the business operations in both cases were, I mean, you have to stay in touch with the person, you know, with your business office to pull the pieces together, but if, you know, a lot of the business offices on this campus are very accomplished with multidisciplinary, multi-university activities. MURIs have strange budget periods, but again, if you work with an office that's dealt with it before, it's pretty effective.
The hard part is when your PM moves to Germany and doesn't tell you in advance, and you've already sent that university money that, for the following year, and then they're not there, and they don't have any group, and how do you get them to send the money back or reallocate it? And again, if your PM is really on your side, it all works. So I would say once you have one of these, there's many scenarios. Some is the PM changes multiple times. And the other is you have the same PM. And again, they want you to be successful because, as David was saying, this is a way that they grow their program. They have very little incentive to have a failing MURI or to fail you out of the program. So if you call them up and say, look, I have this problem and I have a rational solution, there's a very good chance they're going to agree with you as long as it's within sort of the bounds of reality.
And so we have moved in the second one, you know, have had huge cash flows moving around from what we had originally proposed because of how people moved and how the program evolved. And the PM usually responded with an email, "I confirm," and then the businesses' offices, they do their job.
> So the two of you are nodding, and do you have anything else to--
> No, I don't think--
> Say about that?
> We've ever had any real administrative problems. I think one of the ones I'm on right now has some administrative problems because the lead PI changed institutions and one of the other PIs moved to a, you know, moved also. And like you said, the money was already there, and so there's no way to pay the person there, and, right. And anyways, that can be kind of a mess when people move around a lot. But that's a reality, so it hasn't really been an issue. I think the more difficult thing with managing the group is sometimes, you know, some people are really participating, you know. They're taking their money and they're doing what they're doing. And that's sort of a challenge to keep people engaged. So that's part of picking the team, though. You, yeah. There's a great value to having that star senior person on it, but if that star senior person is going to just take the money, and keep doing the same thing they've always done, and not really, you know, interact with the rest of the group, I don't know if it's, sometimes it's not worth that.
> And Gary?
> I can't but just agree with what you're saying. We're at a much earlier stage than you gentlemen are. Our MURI is relatively new, but I can already see some of the issues developing that you're describing. As far as setting up the MURI, it's been very straightforward. We've been fortunate to work with a business office here in MNTL, and they've done a terrific job. But already with some of the senior people, and getting them together, and to work together as a team, and just getting their time has been a little bit of a challenge. And the phrase, herding cats, comes to mind when thinking about this. But they're great people, and they've, they have a long track record of working together on multidisciplinary, multi-institutional programs, so confident that it's going to work well. So for those of you that are contemplating doing this, I wouldn't be concerned about the institutional issues. I think it's more of the scientific basis for your proposal that really matters the most.