Research Projects Card Now Available in ONE.UF

UF faculty can now quickly access valuable information about their research projects – such as the end date and how much of their budget remains – on their smartphones, tablets or desktops through the ONE.UF electronic portal.  

“The Research Projects card brings sponsored projects awareness to the mobile-enabled ONE.UF platform,” said Rob Ferl, distinguished professor and assistant vice president for research. “Faculty can now see alerts and other project information intelligently displayed on their ONE.UF page, alerting especially to projects that might need attention. In addition to the project alerts, deep project spending and budget information is just a click away. Putting this intelligently managed project information beside other key faculty information, such as teaching schedules and grades, was a guiding principle during development.” 

When researchers log into their ONE.UF account, they will see a Research Projects Alert card that provides a snapshot of all their currently funded projects, including end date, project sponsor and balance. It also includes helpful indicators such as days remaining and whether they are on track with their spending, known as burn rate. If they click on the projects, they are taken to the project page in MyInvestigator for even more detailed information. 

“It’s very visual,” said Karla Shelnutt, an associate professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and an early tester of the system. “So if you’re looking for a snapshot of where you are in your projects, it does a nice job of summarizing a lot of that in one place. It’s very easy to understand.” 

Sylvain Doré, a professor of anesthesiology and chair of the UF Faculty Senate who also tested the system, said “this system helps us to stay in compliance with funding agencies and to allocate resources so that the projects keep moving forward. Having this clear picture of the funding for multiple grants also helps faculty to plan out recruitment of graduate students and post-docs.” 

David Norton, UF’s vice president for research, said the Research Projects card is a good example of how UF Research is working to reduce the administrative burden on faculty as they manage their research projects.  

“Anything we can do to help faculty researchers stay focused on their science while still fulfilling all of our commitments to funding agencies is a win for the university,” Norton said. “The less time our researchers have to spend on administrative duties, the more time they can spend making new discoveries.” 

Ferl said the project is the result of a deep collaboration between UF Research and UFIT that embraced faculty input and leveraged UFIT’s expertise to pull data from major data repositories and to create a positive user experience.  

“The result is a faculty-tested, mobile-enabled presentation that quickly alerts faculty to projects needing attention, while also providing quick access to their entire sponsored project portfolio,” Ferl said. “This Project Alerts dashboard is the first of multiple project management tools that are being developed within ONE.UF, all with the goal of simplifying the world of management within the faculty realm.” 

“It’s a nice addition to the toolbox that we have as researchers,” Shelnutt said.