Research

What does an Institutional Review Board do?

lblouin — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 17:41:36 +0000

What does an Institutional Review Board do? lblouin Mon, 06/30/2025 - 13:41

Faculty research is a time-consuming endeavor — even in the planning stages. Researchers have to invest hundreds of hours in finding good ideas, vetting them for originality, researching funding programs, writing proposals and hiring research assistants. And for any study that involves human subjects, researchers have one more to-do: Submitting their project to be reviewed by someone from one of two main Institutional Review Boards at U-M — or possibly the entire board if the work involves tricky ethical issues. Elizabeth Molina, the U-M research compliance specialist with the IRB Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences who handles all initial IRB review applications coming from faculty, postdocs and student researchers at ��-Dearborn, says IRB reviews involve carefully evaluating all aspects of a proposed research project. The goal is to make sure the methodology complies with federal and state regulations, ethical principles and U-M specific policies designed to protect the rights and welfare of human participants involved in research conducted by faculty, staff and students on U-M’s three campuses. An IRB will then give the researcher a green light or a rejection, or request changes to their project to bring it into compliance. Notably, an IRB always has a diverse mix of people, including non-scientists and community members, so that complicated issues can be evaluated from a variety of perspectives. Sometimes, if a study is reviewed by the full board, researchers and study teams are invited to the review sessions so they can work through tricky issues as a group.

In practice, Molina says her work with the IRB involves navigating a lot of nuances with consent and privacy issues. Sometimes, a review might be super quick. “The first thing we actually look for is if the work involves something that the IRB needs to review,” Molina says. “For example, if a faculty member wants to survey students in their class solely to inform their own teaching practice and not to generalize or disseminate the findings beyond their classroom, then IRB approval is not required,” Molina says. But if the faculty member envisions they might use the results down the road in a research project, then Molina would work with them to make sure they’re, say, obtaining consent in a way that complies with regulations. Depending on what a research survey is about, a review could get more or less involved. A survey asking people about what method they use to heat their homes would require a lower level of review. But if a researcher is asking people about a more sensitive subject, like their personal participation in illegal activity, then the methodology for collecting responses and how the researchers manage and present the data would have to be more carefully thought out. The goal is to ensure that nothing compromises a participant’s anonymity or inadvertently creates adverse consequences for the person.

Nuance is baked into Molina’s work. After all, it’s the nature of research to investigate novel territory, and tricky test cases are essentially how the boundaries of ethical systems get defined and refined. Moreover, while some IRB rules, like those regarding children in medical studies, are more specific, Molina says many regulations are intentionally broad and open to interpretation so they can be inclusive of a wide variety of cases. For straightforward projects, Molina can conduct a regulatory and administrative review of the application herself and communicate with the researcher or study team if she needs any additional information. If the research is “exempt,” meaning it’s research that presents minimal risk to participants and falls under specific exemption categories defined by regulations, then she can issue the approval once any issues are resolved. If a study does not meet any of the exemption categories, she refers it to another reviewer, typically an expert in the subject matter, who assesses the risk and can issue an approval. However, if the study presents more than minimal risk or there is a complicated ethical question, Molina will bring it to the IRB staff for discussion to confirm that it should go to the full board for review. The full board typically discusses three to five studies a month. Only the full board can issue a disapproval, which Molina says is rare.

There are all kinds of tricky situations, especially regarding consent. For example, Molina says if researchers want to observe people without their knowledge, or not tell a participant everything up front, the IRB would review the proposal carefully. In some cases, the IRB can approve a waiver or alteration of informed consent, but only if the study poses no more than minimal risk, doesn’t affect participants’ rights or welfare, and couldn’t be done otherwise. When possible, participants are debriefed afterward and given the option to withdraw their data once they know the full details of the study. However, Molina says there are rare cases where debriefing might actually cause more harm than good. “For example, if someone was included in a study for an embarrassing reason, or finds out they were part of a study without knowing, it could cause distress, lead to mistrust in the research process or the researchers, and discourage future participation,” she says. Moreover, if the research involves children or teenagers, the study team has to obtain consent from both the parents and the kid (referred to in the later case as “assent”). “But there may be circumstances where it would be risky to obtain parental consent,” Molina says. “Let’s say you wanted to talk with teenagers about their sexual orientation. Asking the parents if the child could participate in the research might be risky for that teenager. In situations like that, the researcher could request a waiver of parental permission, because the benefits of doing so could outweigh the risks.”

The gray areas and subtleties are essentially limitless. If a study involves observing people in a public space, that might not require consent, because people don’t have the same expectations of privacy. But if the setting were a semi-public space, like a workplace, that’s going to require a higher level of IRB review. “Or let’s say you’re recruiting participants in a public space, but you’re recruiting for an HPV study. Are participants going to feel comfortable coming to you, and are you taking steps to protect their privacy?” Molina says. Because there are so many nuances, Molina encourages researchers to reach out to talk through any questions they have before submitting their projects to the IRB for an official review. She also conducts monthly IRB “On-the-Road” sessions, where researchers can connect with her on Zoom to talk through issues, or even ask questions about the admittedly not-the-most-user-friendly eResearch software researchers use to submit their projects for review. “People often don’t know what they need to provide us, or what a particular question is asking, or the level of detail we need to provide an evaluation of risk,” she says. “Or, for approved standard studies, they might not know that if they change something on their flyer or their consent form, even something that seems small, like changing your phone number or adding a QR code, that requires an amendment. So a conversation clarifies that. That’s one reason I do the On-the-Road sessions. That way, people can meet me and see that I’m not intimidating. I’m not the police. You can tell me about your challenges and we can try to figure them out together.”

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Want to learn more about what the IRB does and its review process? Check out the IRB Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences website. Have questions for Molina about an upcoming project? Faculty and students can reach out directly at molinael@umich.edu or attend an upcoming IRB On-the-Road session.

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Mon, 06/30/2025 - 17:40

If a research study involves human subjects, it has to go through an Institutional Review Board evaluation. But ��-Dearborn’s IRB liaison, Elizabeth Molina, wants faculty, staff and students to see her as a partner, not the ethics police.

Elizabeth Molina, a U-M research compliance specialist with the IRB Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences, handles all initial IRB application reviews coming from faculty, postdocs and student researchers on the ��-Dearborn campus.

News

A team won a surprise victory at this year’s Senior Design competition

lblouin — Mon, 19 May 2025 12:08:15 +0000

A team won a surprise victory at this year’s Senior Design competition lblouin Mon, 05/19/2025 - 08:08

Of the five seniors on their team, only Micah Hagedorn says he thought they had a shot at the Best in College award — the top honor at the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s annual Senior Design Competition — and that was only after the team earned a nod for the best project from the Mechanical Engineering department. Just weeks earlier, things were not going well for Hagedorn and teammates Nicole Kormos, Rosa Carapia, Kenny Conuel Oralde and Emmet Reamer. Multiple times they’d had shipments of biological materials spoil when the supplier mistakenly shipped them to the Ann Arbor campus. And Carapia spent weeks trying to figure out their not-so-state-of-the-art microscope — at one point resorting to contacting the rep whose business card had been attached to the device who knows when. “It was the last couple weeks and I was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this isn’t going to happen,’” Carapia says. “I was really thinking, ‘Our presentation was just going to look dumb because there’d be nothing there.’”

The team bumped into quite a few challenges, in part, because their multi-faceted project was one of the more ambitious in the competition. Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Caymen Novak had it on her to-do list for some time to bring an imaging technique known as traction force microscopy to the Dearborn campus for the first time. TFM is used often in mechanobiology to study how cells interact with their microenvironments, and Novak thought it could be very useful for her current work, which is investigating how sex-based differences influence pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease marked by significant scarring and stiffening of lung tissue. “So just to explain it briefly, you have a gel with fluorescent beads in it, and you put cells on it, so the cell interacts with the surface and pulls on it,” Novak explains. “Then, you take some ‘before’ pictures of the cells and the fluorescent beads, then you lift the cells off and take an ‘after’ picture. By measuring the movement of the beads, you can get a representation of the amount of force the cell is exerting on the surface.”

Novak had used this technique in her postdoctoral work at The Ohio State University, but there, she was plugging into an established lab setup. She hadn’t ever personally created the gels or configured the microscope for this type of imaging, and the analysis protocol was a closely guarded secret of the project’s principal investigator. So when Kormos, who’d been working as a student researcher in Novak’s lab, asked Novak if she had any projects for her and her Senior Design teammates, Novak immediately thought of the TFM setup. “I thought, ‘This sounds like a really ambitious Senior Design project. Let’s see how far they get,’” Novak says. Kormos took the idea to her teammates, who all liked the idea. They sketched out a plan for who would do what and got to work.

Because TFM is an established technique, there was actually quite a bit of literature out there to guide them. But it’s hardly a plug-and-play technology. The gels, for example, can’t be purchased off the shelf. You have to buy all the ingredients and make your own gel from scratch, fine tuning the chemistry so you have a medium with the proper stiffness for the kind of cells you want to study. Kormos and Reamer took on that part of the project and ran into several challenges. “You’d think because this has been done before, it would be pretty straightforward, but you follow the recipe, and sometimes your gel just doesn’t form,” Kormos says. “So we had to do some digging and figure out which component was doing what. Then we learned you had to add this component before that one or it wouldn’t work, or you have to dilute something just before you add it. So it took some troubleshooting before we found the proper protocol.” And then there was the unexpected challenge of even getting the materials properly delivered to their lab. Despite specifying the correct Dearborn campus address, Reamer says the distributor shipped their biologically sensitive components — one costing $400 for 50 milligrams — to the Ann Arbor campus not once but twice. When the third shipment finally made it to the lab, it arrived a week late. “I spent a lot of time on customer service,” Reamer says, wryly. “That was probably my biggest contribution to the project.”

After overcoming multiple shipping snafus, Nicole Kormos (left) and Emmet Reamer successfully created the custom gels that are used in traction force microscopy.

Carapia, meanwhile, was wrestling with the lab’s less-than-ideal microscope to see if they could get it to work for TFM. She got some initial guidance from a couple other researchers on campus who also use this particular instrument. She made some initial progress — only to discover that she’d need to integrate a totally different camera-software setup than the one she’d just spent the past few weeks learning. Then, a weeks-long email back-and-forth with the person on that business card ended up in a dead end. In the end, Carapia relied on her engineer’s instincts, rolled up her sleeves and figured out most of it herself.

Rosa Carapia (left) took on the challenge of adapting the lab’s older microscope, with help from teammate Emmet Reamer.

Hagedorn and Oralde tackled the analysis part of the project. Essentially they would have to write and tweak software to properly measure the displacement of the fluorescent beads and then convert those measurements into forces, given the known characteristics of the gel. Hagedorn dug into the published literature and found an open-source algorithm he thought they could work with. “By the end, it was pretty good, but initially, we got a lot of random arrows that were pointing in random directions,” Oralde says. “And we had to tweak variables and figure out what the right contrast was for the images, so the algorithm was tracking points that were relevant and not just random,” Hagedorn adds.

Micah Hagedorn (left) and Kenny Conuel Oralde show off the software they built to measure displacements and calculate corresponding forces that the cells exert.

All the effort finally — and somewhat unexpectedly — paid off. With just a week or so to go until the Senior Design Competition day — and following a 19-hour session in the lab — they got their final set of images to work, measured the displacements and calculated the corresponding forces. The students say they would have loved to have had more time to run a mini-study with their technique, which was their original plan. (They joke it may have been possible had their FedEx packages arrived on time.) But they’re ultimately satisfied with the results. Novak is now digging through their final report to see what her next moves will be. “I’ve still not gotten hands-on with this myself, so I’ll have to see if I can make this process work, or possibly throw it to another Senior Design team to keep working on it,” Novak says.

Regardless, she’s impressed with the team’s hard work and tenacity. “It was interesting to watch them experience the difficulties of research,” Novak says. “They were, like, ‘We were there for hours trying to take these images.’ And I’m, like, ‘Yep, that’s how it works.’ But you have to admire their dedication in forcing this project to work on any level. In research, everything takes three times as long as you predict, often because of silly things, like deliveries going to the wrong address, which are totally beyond your control. And then you have to put way more effort in than you think. So that was a little eye-opening for them. But I’m sure they’ll feel it was worth it because they won everything! It doesn’t get better than that.”

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Story by Lou Blouin. Photos by Annie Barker.

Awards

Experiential Learning

Undergraduate Research

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Mechanical Engineering

Off

Mon, 05/19/2025 - 12:07

Assistant Professor Caymen Novak threw an ambitious project to her Senior Design team. It almost didn’t work out. Until it did.

From left, seniors Kenny Conuel Oralde, Emmet Reamer, Rosa Carapia, Nicole Kormos and Micah Hagedorn took home the top prize at this year’s Senior Design Competition for their work on an imaging technique known as traction force microscopy.

News

Office of Research update for May 2025

lblouin — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:21:02 +0000

Office of Research update for May 2025 lblouin Mon, 05/12/2025 - 13:21

External Awards Received

U-M Principal Investigator: Zhi Zhang, Natural Sciences, CASL
Project Title: Non-invasive Targeted Nanotherapy for the Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury
Sponsor: M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust via Washington State University
Award Amount: $20,000

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) refers to a brain injury that is caused by an outside force, which often has long-lasting effects. However, most of the drugs cannot pass the blood brain barrier (BBB), a highly selective membrane that separates the blood from the brain, thus the treatment options for TBI are limited. In this project, Dr. Zhang, in collaboration with Washington State University, has created a non-invasive drug delivery system that can efficiently transport drugs across the BBB. This drug delivery system not only delivers the drugs to the injured brain region but also targets specific cells that are affected by TBI. The main objective of this proposed project is to evaluate the short-term and long-term effectiveness of this novel nanoplatform in TBI. This project holds immense promise for TBI research, offering innovative approaches to drug delivery, diagnosis, and treatment, potentially leading to more effective therapies and improved patient outcomes.

Principal Investigator: Shan Bao, Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering, CECS
Project Title: Evaluating the Applicability of Global AEB Testing Scenarios in the U.S. Context – Toward Global Harmonization
Sponsor: Toyota Motor North America, Inc.
Awarded Amount: $443,086

Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) represents a critical advancement in vehicle safety technology, designed to prevent collisions by automatically engaging the brakes when potential impacts are detected. These systems employ an array of sensors, cameras, and radar technology to continuously monitor the vehicle's surroundings, capable of responding faster than human reflexes in critical moments. Particularly effective in common accident scenarios - such as sudden traffic slowdowns, pedestrian crossings, or instances of driver inattention - AEB has become a cornerstone of modern automotive safety systems. Dr. Bao will focus on conducting a comprehensive evaluation of international AEB testing procedures to assess their real-world applicability in order to bridge the gap between laboratory testing conditions and real-world driving demands, thereby enhancing AEB system effectiveness. This work will contribute directly to the development of more robust safety features, helping to create a transportation ecosystem where preventable accidents are significantly reduced. The insights gained may also inform the evolution of complementary advanced driver assistance systems, further advancing vehicle safety standards worldwide.

Principal Investigator: Xuan Zhou, Electrical & Computer Engineering, CECS
Project Title: Closing the Loop: Secondary Life Battery Energy Storage Systems for Grid Applications and Recycling
Sponsor: Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy
Awarded Amount: $1,485,037

This project focuses on giving old electric vehicle (EV) batteries a second life by turning them into energy storage systems that can help power homes, businesses, and microgrids. Instead of throwing away used batteries, the team will carefully test, combine, and reuse them to create new, reliable energy systems. Later, when these reused batteries reach the end of their life, valuable materials like nickel, cobalt, and magnesium will be recovered and recycled to make new batteries. This helps reduce waste, saves important natural resources, and supports cleaner, more affordable energy for communities.

Announcements

ORSP Updates and Guidance for Federally Sponsored Projects

The U-M Office of Research & Sponsored Projects has provided the following guidance for faculty and staff questions about the approach to proposals or new and existing awards:

Proposal Submissions: All federal proposals will be submitted in accordance with the appropriate negotiated indirect (F&A) cost rate agreement. Funding opportunities that prohibit the application of institutional negotiated F&A rates should be brought to the ORSP Pre-Award Team
New Awards: We expect all new federal awards should be received with the appropriate rate, based on our rate agreement or program specific policy. ORSP will contact sponsors for corrections if new awards are received with rates other than proposed.
Existing Awards: PIs should continue project activities and incurring associated expenses for their active awards. If you receive notices for actions (e.g., stop work, stop activities, terminations) on active awards, you should provide them to your research administrator (RA) for submission to ORSP for review and appropriate action.
Certifications/Attestations: PIs should not make or provide attestations on behalf of the institution (recipient, awardee, grantee). If you receive written requests for attestations or certifications regarding an active or pending award, provide the documentation to your RA to be submitted to ORSP for review and determination of the appropriate action.

New Federal Policy in Effect for Research Involving Certain Biological Agents and Toxins

A new policy on research with certain pathogens and biological toxins went into effect as of May 6, 2025, that may require additional information for new proposals being submitted.

The United States Government Policy for Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential (“USG DURC-PEPP policy”) requires assessment of life sciences research at the proposal submission stage to ensure that risk assessments and mitigation plans are completed and approved prior to funding for any work deemed subject to the policy.

All U-M Principal Investigators proposing work with or generating any replication-competent infectious agent or proposing to work with a toxin of any amount from the Federal Select Agents and Toxins list must assess whether their research is reasonably anticipated to be within the scope of research categorized under the USG DURC-PEPP Policy. The ��-Dearborn Office of Research proposal staff will assist PIs with determining whether this assessment will be necessary for their proposals.

More information on the USG DURC-PEPP policy and the U-M implementation process is on the IBC DURC-PEPP webpage, and in the IBC Fast Facts: DURC-PEPP Edition. Contact ibcstaff@umich.edu with any questions.

Updates from the �� Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR)

As a reminder, OVPR continues to provide information, updates, and tracking of federal changes related to the university’s research enterprise on their Federal Research Blog page. This includes information about U-M’s internal program to support units in managing uncertainty related to funding stoppages, mitigate impacts to staff, and reduce risk to health and safety with respect to critical research already underway. Bookmark and check back often!

Abstract/SOW Now Required for All Proposals

Due to a change in the Proposal Approval Form (PAF) in eResearch, an abstract or statement of work is now a requirement for all proposals. For ��-Dearborn’s process, this will replace the three key terms we normally request for the PAF.

Research Events in May

IRWG Faculty Writing Retreat
- Join IRWG for a four-day writing retreat designed to foster productivity, connection, and support for feminist scholars. Enjoy structured writing time, goal setting, and reflections in a scenic setting at U-M Recreational Sports.
- IRWG’s Savannah Hall will be available for grant proposal consultations. Space is limited, and full attendance is expected. The venue is wheelchair accessible and near the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, perfect for breaks to enjoy nature. Light breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided. This event is only open to faculty.
- May 12-15, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
- Register here
��-Ann Arbor Office of Research Development Grant Prix Seminar Series
- ��-Ann Arbor Office of Research Development (ORD) has launched a seminar series on research proposal development, featuring a range of topics designed to boost grant writing expertise. View previous sessions on the ORD YouTube. Grant Prix will continue every third Friday of the month at 12 p.m. starting in February:
  - May 23: Broadening participation and inclusive excellence in grant proposals, virtual
- Register now for an opportunity to elevate your grant writing skills!
Michigan Medicine - Storage and Retention of Data
- Presented by IRBMED, a unit of the Medical School Office of Research, this course will review the fundamentals of maintaining confidentiality of subject data, including data encryption and protection, using secure environments and external websites, and distinguishing among anonymized, coded, and de- identified datasets.
- Tuesday, May 20, 1-2 p.m., virtual
- Register here
MICHR - Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR4K) Summer 2025
- RCR4K is a seminar that is designed to meet the requirements of the NIH K-23, or any federal or non-federal career development grant. The 5-session (10 hour) seminar is mostly interactive, practice-based, and focused on addressing RCR issues (ethics, integrity, and regulatory matters) that have arisen in the course of your own funded research. It is relevant, interactive, and includes mentoring from experienced faculty.
  - Session 1: Thursday, June 26, 9-11 a.m. - History of research ethics, Human subjects research regulations
  - Session 2: Thursday, July 17, 9-11 a.m. - Research integrity: falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism
  - Session 3: Thursday, Aug. 14, 9-11 a.m. - Authorship & Plagiarism
  - Session 4: Thursday, Sept. 18, 9-11 a.m. - Clinical Trial Design: The Support Trial
  - Session 5: Thursday, Oct. 16, 9-11 a.m. - Public Health Research, and Research with data and specimens: Henrietta Lacks and the Common Rule debate
- ��-Ann Arbor North Campus Research Complex, Bldg. 300, Room 376
- Register here

Research Resource Highlight: Reference Finder

Every month, the Office of Research features a resource and/or tool that is available for researchers. This month, we are featuring Reference Finder.

Reference Finder is a research tool provided by the National Academies Press (NAP) and can be used to help identify community reports supporting the need for proposed research. Copy and paste brief content from an article or your rough draft, then click "Find Relevant Reports". Reference Finder analyzes the text you provide and identifies the reports that are most likely to have content that might apply to your needs.

Upcoming Funding Opportunities

The Office of Research maintains a list of selected funding opportunities, organized by college on our website under Announcements. In addition, we encourage you to check out the Hanover Research subject area calendars with funding opportunities which we upload on a regular basis to our website.

Please refer to OVPR’s Tracking Federal Changes 2025 page for more information and updates related to the Trump administration's changes to federal research funding.

Use the updated U-M Research Commons to look up internal (to U-M) funding opportunities and Limited Submission opportunities open to Dearborn researchers.

Contact the ��-Dearborn Office of Research if you would like more information about submitting a proposal to any of the programs.

Faculty Research

Research

Office of Research

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Mon, 05/12/2025 - 17:20

See which of your colleagues' work is getting funded, browse the calendar of upcoming research events and learn about ways to support your work.

News

How postdocs help faculty take research to another level

lblouin — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 16:34:51 +0000

How postdocs help faculty take research to another level lblouin Mon, 03/31/2025 - 12:34

When students complete a doctoral degree, they’re at the top of one of the highest mountains in higher education. But just like undergraduates facing post-graduation anxiety, postdoctoral life can represent a fraught time for recent PhD graduates. For those interested in long-term careers in academia, they’re likely embarking on job searches for highly competitive faculty positions. And if someone wants to work in the private sector, employers in at least some industries seem to balk at hiring highly trained applicants with little industry experience — simply because they generally command higher salaries than those with less-advanced degrees.

Director of Research Development Vessela Vassileva-Clarke
Photo by Julianne Lindsey

But there is another option for recent PhD grads: working as a postdoctoral researcher. As the name suggests, this is a research position at a university, typically lasting one to three years, that someone takes after they finish their PhD. ��-Dearborn Director of Research Development Vessela Vassileva-Clarke says this may be an attractive route for a number of reasons. For example, if a person isn’t quite sure whether they want to go into academia or industry, a postdoc position can simply buy someone a little time to figure it out, while they continue to stay active and build a research portfolio. And for those who are definitely interested in faculty positions, doing a postdoc can help someone burnish their CV if, say, they weren't able to publish as much as they’d liked during their PhD program. In addition, depending on the arrangement between the researcher and their faculty advisor, Vassileva-Clarke says a postdoc position might give someone a chance to log some teaching experience — or even pursue an externally funded grant for a research project that they co-lead with a faculty member. Moreover, a postdoc gives recent PhD grads experiences in other core parts of academic life that they may not have gotten in their doctoral programs, like proposal writing.

��-Dearborn currently has about a dozen postdoctoral researchers working on campus, the vast majority of whom are working with faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Rongheng Li, who finished his PhD at ��-Dearborn under Mechanical Engineering Professor Ben Q. Li in 2019, says the opportunity to do a postdoc actually grew organically out of his doctoral research experience. His research focused on some of the advanced mathematical challenges associated with the use of nanoparticles in photovoltaic systems, which is seen as a promising way of improving output from solar panels. But then one day, toward the end of his PhD program, Li found himself chatting with Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Xuan (Joe) Zhou. The two of them discovered that a lot of the same mathematical methods Li was using in the area of photovoltaics might have interesting applications for battery research, which is Zhou’s specialty. Now, as a postdoc, Li is working on several of Zhou’s funded projects, including one exploring how well used EV batteries perform when used in a grid-tied storage system.

“A lot of my prior work has been very theoretical, so working with Dr. Zhou is giving me a chance to learn in a more experimental setting,” Li says. “I’m learning new instrumentation, and I got to visit the clean room in Ann Arbor, where they are working on a variety of projects. So I think it’s going to be quite valuable for me to get this hands-on experience, including with batteries, which is a technology that’s so important for the future.” Another big payoff for Li: He’s getting to work closely with the research team’s industry partners, which is helping him see how private sector projects are managed and how their teams work. After his postdoc, he thinks he’ll likely be applying for faculty jobs in the United States. But he’s not opposed to a position in the private sector, and he thinks the practical experience he’s logging during his postdoc will make him a more competitive candidate.

Rongheng Li completed his PhD at ��-Dearborn in 2019 and now works as a postdoctoral researcher. Photo by Annie Barker

Gajendra Singh Chawda followed a different path to ��-Dearborn for his postdoc. Chawda finished his PhD in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in early 2022 and took a postdoctoral research position there after graduation. But he really wanted to get experience at an American university, and when he saw a posting for a postdoctoral research position working with Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Wencong Su, he felt like it would be a great fit. Chawda’s work focuses on the complexities of integrating renewable energy into the electric grid and renewable energy access for economically disadvantaged communities — which happen to be two of Su’s research interests. Currently, Chawda is working on some foundational research on high-frequency AC microgrids — a technology that many researchers and industry experts see as vital for modernizing the electric grid so it can accommodate more renewable energy and battery storage. Chawda says one of the other big perks of the position is that he gets to work as a lecturer — the first time he’s had the opportunity to teach students outside of a lab setting.

Moreover, it’s also been an exciting time for his family. His wife and daughter accompanied him for this adventure in the United States, and Chawda says his daughter loves her school in Dearborn Heights. “She’s always so excited to come home and show me what she’s done at school,” he says. “The American education system is a lot different. In India, I would say it’s more focused on books and, here, students seem to do a lot of activities. For example, she came home the other day and was so proud to show me the house that she built.” Like Li, Chawda says he’s hoping to find a faculty position at an American university after his postdoc and thinks having that experience on his CV will boost his chances of success.

Aside from the professional benefits to postdoctoral researchers, Vassileva-Clarke says there are huge benefits for their faculty supervisors. “The impact is tremendous. Postdoctoral researchers are just so helpful to faculty members because they are already trained and highly skilled, so they can help a faculty member with so many things that are so time consuming, like proposal writing, hands-on research in the lab, or research training and mentoring of students,” Vassileva-Clarke says. “PhD students are super helpful too, but you still have to train them, advise them, and then some of them find out research is not their calling. So a postdoc really extends the bandwidth of the faculty member.”

Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry Christos Constantinides
Photo by Annie Barker

Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry Christos Constantinides can vouch for that. As an early-career faculty member working towards tenure, he was excited to recently land a large grant from the U.S. Department of Energy supporting research that could improve nuclear magnetic resonance-based technologies like MRI. But with a demanding course load teaching organic chemistry to undergraduates, he frankly needs help with the very labor-intensive, advanced chemistry that the DOE-funded project demands. A postdoc was really his only option, since some of the work is too advanced for the undergraduate students he’ll also be hiring for the project, and his department doesn’t have a PhD program he can use to recruit doctoral students.

When he posted the position, Constantinides was surprised to get 65 applicants. He finds that pretty encouraging given that ��-Dearborn just recently earned an R2 designation and he’s still in the process of making his name in the field. But as someone who did a three-year postdoc himself, which he says is a prerequisite to getting a tenure-track position in his discipline, Constantinides gets the logic. “You can go work for a big name at a big university, and if everything goes well, you’ll get your publications and, most importantly, get a letter of recommendation from your mentor. You’re basically going to get a job at that point. But if you don’t get the letter, it can be the kiss of death,” Constantinides says. “That big name — you’re going to see that person maybe one or two hours a week. And, frankly, they don’t need the publications. Me, though? I need the papers. So if you come work with me, you’re going to get more support, more mentorship and hopefully more publications. It’s kind of a gamble either way, but for some people, this postdoc opportunity is going to feel like a good bet.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

Natural Sciences

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Office of Research

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Mon, 03/31/2025 - 16:31

Postdoctoral researchers on campus are another sign of ��-Dearborn’s growing research culture. But what exactly do postdocs do, and why can they be a game changer for university research?

Postdoctoral researcher Gajendra Singh Chawda is currently researching high-frequency AC microgrids with Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Wencong Su. Photo by Annie Barker

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