Senior Vice President for Research

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , invites nominations and applications for the position of Senior Vice President for Research (SVPR). The SVPR provides leadership in supporting and advancing a world-class research enterprise that has this year generated $750M in total funding. Reporting to the University’s Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Distinguished Professor, Dr. Prabhas V. Moghe, the SVPR will be a member of the President’s cabinet and will interface regularly with the President, University leadership, the Chancellors of Rutgers’ four campuses, research and academic leaders at the campuses, the University’s researchers and scholars, external partners and sponsors, and counterparts at other top research universities. The SVPR provides leadership and strategic direction to shape and advance Rutgers’ research mission. In the context of ongoing growth, the SVPR will help develop, socialize, and implement a vision for investment in research initiatives and resources across the University’s schools, colleges, centers, and institutes that will stimulate, guide, and enable researchers while protecting the University, its researchers, and its research subjects.

A Research I university in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, and a member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Rutgers is a leading national research university and the State of New Jersey’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. More than 71,000 students and 23,500 full- and part-time faculty and staff learn, work, and serve the public at Rutgers, which in FY 2021 forecasts a comprehensive budget of over $4.5 billion. The University has a broad presence across New Jersey, with locations in all 21 counties, and supports academic and research enterprises around the world. It offers over 100 undergraduate majors and 200 graduate programs and degrees and sustains more than 300 research centers and institutes in 31 undergraduate colleges and graduate and professional schools across four chancellor units: Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Rutgers Biomedical & Health Sciences (RBHS), Rutgers University-Newark, and Rutgers University-Camden.

On July 1, 2013 Rutgers merged with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, bringing together two medical schools and five health-related schools (Dental, Health Professions, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health), and the School of Graduate Studies into the RBHS chancellor units within the University. Rutgers New Brunswick and RBHS together hold Rutgers’ membership in the AAU. The ongoing cultivation of synergies between researchers, research initiatives, and research-support services across the University, that have accelerated in the wake of the merger, creates exciting opportunities for leadership and bold innovation that will make Rutgers the most dynamic research institution in the Big Ten.

The Office for Research (OFR), led by the SVPR, aims to further the reach of Rutgers research and empower the Rutgers University community in creating knowledge and advancing discoveries that benefit the citizens of New Jersey and the world. Leading a customer-focused organization of approximately 300 employees, the SVPR directly supervises a budget of over $45 million. For more information on research at Rutgers University, visit https://research.rutgers.edu/ .

Areas of responsibility encompassed by this University-wide role include, first, all aspects of research management, including management of institutional research cores; oversight of regulatory and compliance requirements; implementation of institutional policies governing research; efficient delivery of services and programs across the spectrum of pre-award, post-award, and regulatory services that positively impact research activities; promoting the development of large collaborative proposals; analyzing, reporting on, and communicating about Rutgers’ research enterprise. Second, the SVPR provides leadership of the University’s activities in intellectual-property management, technology development, and commercialization through licenses and spinout companies. In a third area of leadership, the SVPR will jointly supervise Rutgers’ new Corporate Engagement Center, launched with the Rutgers University Foundation in order to provide an environment to foster long-term partnerships between businesses and the university community in sponsored research, technology commercialization, recruitment, and philanthropy.

Qualified candidates will possess a PhD, MD, or related degrees, with scholarly credentials worthy of appointment as a full professor with tenure. The SVPR will be a distinguished scholar with a broad grasp of science and science policy, the gravitas to sustain peer relationships with an eminent faculty, and the ability to lead a large administrative service organization in support of a central mission area across the University. They will have had a successful career as a researcher and will want to turn (or will have already turned) to championing others’ research. They will be an action-oriented leader who nonetheless consults judiciously and who balances institutional and individual considerations. Candidates’ professional experience must include having managed extramural research at a major research university, in the federal government, or at another entity engaged in sponsored research such as a national or large corporate lab. In addition to impeccable personal and professional integrity, the successful candidate will bring experience in planning, growing and diversifying research while engaging and promoting women and historically underrepresented groups in the research enterprise. With an understanding and respect for the challenges of academic research, they must also demonstrate the ability to articulate the University’s research vision, goals, accomplishments and needs to a broad range of external constituencies, including alumni, academic, government representatives and the business and industrial communities.

It is Rutgers University policy to provide equal employment opportunity to all its employees and applicants for employment regardless of their race, creed, color, national origin, age, ancestry, nationality, marital or domestic partnership or civil union status, sex, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, disability status, liability for military service, protected veteran status, affectional or sexual orientation, atypical cellular or blood trait, genetic information (including the refusal to submit to genetic testing), or any other category protected by law. As an institution, Rutgers values diversity of background and opinion and prohibits discrimination or harassment on the basis of any legally protected class in the areas of hiring, recruitment, promotion, transfer, demotion, training, compensation, pay, fringe benefits, layoff, termination or any other terms and conditions of employment.

Rutgers University has engaged Opus Partners, Inc. to assist this search. To seek additional information, nominate others, or apply, please contact Craig Smith, Partner, or Marisea Rivera, Senior Associate: craig.smith@opuspartners.net / marisea.rivera@opuspartners.net .