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Reference #: 2022126 The Office of the Vice President for Research at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is seeking a highly motivated, resourceful, and trustworthy individual to support the senior leadership team as Assistant Vice President for Research, Strategic Research Initiatives working with the Vice President for Research. The office oversees the university-wide strategic initiatives and operational functions of Carnegie Mellon's $610 million research enterprise and associated top-ranked technology transfer and startup activities, which span the university's academic colleges, research institutes and centers, and the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research and development center. Globally recognized for academic excellence and interdisciplinary research, this position is key to Carnegie Mellon's ambitious plans to deliver innovative and impactful solutions to the most pressing grand challenges of our time.

About Carnegie Mellon

A member of the Association of American universities (AAU), CMU is a global, research intensive private university with more than 1,500 faculty, 17,000 students, more than 117,000 alumni. In 2024, U.S. News World Report ranked CMU #21 among national universities and Times Higher Education at #24 among world universities. CMU is home to top ranked programs in AI, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, software engineering, cybersecurity, business analytics, quantitative analytics, and more. It is also one of a small number of academic institutions in the nation boasting a fully-fledged Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). CMU's confluence of scholarly excellence, robust federal and industry interface, and heritage of innovation has consistently placed it among the world's most dynamic and impactful research institutions. Central to its research impact is CM's strong track record of technology transfer and industry partnerships: over the last five years, CMU faculty, students, and alumni have launched more than 400 start-ups that together have raised more than $7 billion in follow-on funding.

The University is known for its distinctive culture, which champions interdisciplinary inquiry and collaborative efforts in a technology rich environment. With more than a dozen degree-granting locations, as well as a growing number of research partnerships around the world, CMU is truly a global institution. CMU's global footprint fosters cooperation across borders, including from its campuses in Silicon Valley, Qatar, and Rwanda. CMU faculty are known for inspiring students to think creatively, interpret with insight, and solve major societal, scientific, and technological challenges. Current and former faculty and alumni include 20 Nobel Laureates, 79 members of the National Academies, 12 Turing Awardees, 10 Academy Award winners, 116 Emmy Award winners, and 44 Tony Award winners. Exceptionally talented students, roughly 47% undergraduate and 53% graduate, are drawn to the University's commitment to innovative education and training and its outstanding programs across its seven schools and colleges. CMU's annual budget is over $1.2 billion with total research expenditures of over $610 million (FY2023).

After a storied history dating to the early 1900s, in 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute, a science research center founded by the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, to become known as Carnegie Mellon University. Today, CMU is a dynamic institution that has exceptional impact in the world. Although it is among the youngest of the nation's top universities, CMU's extraordinary success emanates from its deeply held core values and a unique heritage of innovation. It is a place of creativity, pragmatism, and ambition, with a tradition of strategically focusing its efforts and resources in areas where it can lead, then pursuing those areas with startling intensity. CMU is firmly committed to academic freedom, tenure protection, and shared governance, providing a fertile environment for faculty success. The University facilitates collaboration across its seven schools and colleges through organizational mechanisms and incentives, such as numerous joint appointments and a dedication to recognizing contributions outside one's main field. CMU has long embraced diversity as a core value that is central and indivisible from the pursuit of intellectual and artistic excellence, and for more than two decades it has made increasing diversity in every constituency and building a supportive and nurturing community a strategic priority.

Research at Carnegie Mellon Carnegie Mellon is known as a hotbed of innovative research, from the founding of the nation's first Robotics Institute in 1979, to the world's first program in engineering and public policy more than 50 years ago. The entrepreneurial mindset of its faculty, staff, and leadership have made the University a pioneer in societally transformative technologies such as the wireless campus, autonomous transportation and smart infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing, among others. Research and creative expression span the arts, humanities, social sciences, science, and engineering as well as the fundamental to the applied, from blue-sky curiosity driven research in the academic units, to large-scale applied research and prototyping at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC), to support for mission-driven agencies at the SEI.

CMU's strengths span the institution: CMU researchers have enriched learning science through research conducted at the LearnLab, a cross-disciplinary international laboratory for advancing the practical science of robust student learning. CMU scholars are pinpointing how children learn languages with partners at the University of Chicago and the George Washington University. CMU chemists are working with colleagues at Yale University as part of the landmark National Institutes of Health-funded Somatic Cell Gene Editing Consortium, aimed at accelerating genome editing research and the development of new classes of therapeutics. CMU is bringing together AI and social sciences researchers from across the country in the AI Institute for Societal Decision Making to develop human-centric AI for societal good that harnesses the power of data and improved understanding of decisions to create better and more trusted choices. Experts at the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, a university-wide research initiative, develop and demonstrate technologies, systems and policies needed to accelerate the transition toward a more sustainable future. CMU's SEI formed the AI Security Incident Response Team to help ensure the safe and effective development and use of AI by analyzing and responding to threats and surety incidents emerging from advances in AI and machine learning.

CMU's unique strengths in robotics, AI, and advanced materials are a growing and major attraction for industry partners. Coupled with the efforts of CMU's Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, the University is a leader in introducing research innovations into the global marketplace and a driving force of economic development activity.

CMU researchers distinguish themselves with an international reputation for the breadth of their work as well as research support, consistently receiving funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Energy, Transportation, among others. Of CMU's $610M million in expenditures in FY2023, 70% of funding was derived from the federal government, with the majority being from the NSF and DOD. The University has diversified its fundi