Three BU faculty earn annual $40,000 research grants

Three assistant faculty members at Boston University received the Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, garnering more than $100,000 over the next three years to continue work and research they have conducted during their term at BU, the university announced Monday.

Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs Julie Sandell said the three professorships, awarded by Provost Jean Morrison and President Robert Brown, are granted to faculty members who have been hired within the past two years.

“They are already very accomplished in their fields, and each one has a terrific trajectory,” Sandell said in an email. “The professorship includes $20,000 per year for three years that is available to the faculty member to support his or her research activities and $20,000 per year for three years provided to the school or college to defray the cost of the faculty member’s salary.”

Junior faculty members Ernest Gonzales, Rachel Flynn and Jacob Bor earned the professorships, granting the associate professors $20,000 for their research and $20,000 to their respective schools and colleges to bolster the recipients’ salaries annually.

The recipients said they were honored by the university’s recognition of the academic progress they have made during their short time at BU.

Bor, a School of Public Health professor of international health at the Center for Global Health and Development, said he was both surprised and thankful for the university to support his future projects.

“My main reaction was that it felt like a secular blessing,” he said. “One challenge for junior faculty is that you don’t have a big pool of grant funding…[for] short term high yield activities that push research forward. At SPH, you have to raise your own salary. Having some protected time to explore new projects and do things that aren’t grant funded is incredibly valuable.”

Flynn, a professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics in the School of Medicine, said she looks to use her grant to conduct laboratory research on DNA mechanisms and cancer.

“Any time you have the support when someone supports your research emotionally and financially is really good,” she said. “The plan is ultimately that it [the grant] will fund supplies for the lab so maybe we can do experiments that are slightly more expensive, that we wouldn’t have been able to do without the support or to hire extra personnel to move research forward.”

Frank Feely, chair of SPH’s Department of Global Public Health, said Bor’s research compliments other research already conducted within SPH.

“It’s great to have a program like this, because students who have gone through rigorous doctoral programs still have this incubation period in which it takes time to generate their own money,” he said. “Being able to support them with important research when they’re very early on in their careers increases the chance of some interesting stuff coming from that part of BU, but also moves a faculty member along in his or her career.”

Gail Steketee, dean of the School of Social Work, said she received overwhelming support for the nomination of Gonzales, an assistant professor of human behavior.

“SSW is very proud to have Ernest on our faculty and excited to have his work recognized by the University,” she said in an email. “This extremely helpful additional time and funding…will help him move forward at a faster pace to help resolve interesting workforce issues as the U.S. population ages.”

Dr. Karen Antman, dean of MED, said based on the promising research all three professors have done so far, their future research will likely have a large impact on the medical community.

“Our Peter Paul scholars contribute to health and well-being locally and globally, from developing novel cancer treatments to effective approaches to the HIV epidemic,” she said in an email. “Their contributions in medicine and health may ultimately benefit all of us.”