START Committee Update: Increasing Our Research Excellence
START Committee Update: Increasing Our Research Excellence
At the end of April, we hosted a town hall to share an update on the progress of the Increasing Our Research Excellence Committee.
This committee is one of six working groups within UC Davis’s Sustaining Teaching and Research Task Force (START), launched by Provost Croughan in 2023 to strengthen the university’s education, research and service mission through strategic, actionable initiatives.
The committee’s primary goal is to advance UC Davis’s current and future research excellence by identifying key challenges and recommending transformative solutions. Its work is organized across four focus areas: facilities, computing, administration and emerging opportunities.
To date, the committee has put forth a total of 13 recommendations for review spanning a range of targeted enhancements, including improvements to grant reporting tools, expanded support for training grants, modernization of network infrastructure and more.
Some initiatives have already been approved for implementation. The first is a strategic investment to enhance shared research core facilities, committing $1.25 million in FY26 and $1 million annually thereafter. The second initiative consolidates multiple recommendations related to high-performance computing, infrastructure and oversight, and includes $2.43 million in ongoing annual support for staffing and equipment maintenance, along with $800,000 in one-time funding for hardware and system upgrades. As part of this effort, a Strategic Administration of Research Computing Oversight Committee is being established to evaluate recharge rates and optimize resource allocation.
More information about these initiatives and next steps is available on the START webpage.
