Name: Miranda Mattingly
Position: Associate Director
Office: Research Development Institute
Institution: University of South Florida (USF)
What attracted you to this work?
I have always been a very purpose-driven person. I like utilizing my skills to help people take ideas, give them clarity, and better articulate them. Before coming to USF, I worked for five years at an office of writing instruction. It was more than the typical writing center. While there I enjoyed helping faculty and graduate students develop their vision for research projects.
I wanted to do this at a bigger scale, so I looked for opportunities to work on bigger-impact research. This first brought me to the USF Foundation, and now I work in a very pre-pre-award space, supporting the creation and development of interdisciplinary and inter-organizational teams geared toward high-impact research and solving societal and global challenges.
What’s your favorite thing about your work?
Working with faculty across a large R1 institution and across many disciplines puts me in new situations every day. My favorite thing is always learning something new.
What’s a handy tool in your tool kit?
I work primarily at the ideation stage with faculty and teams, so my “tools” relate to how to bring people together at a very early stage. I recently presented at NORDP on a series of launch models (see link to presentation slides below), which are helpful at various stages of team development from just trying to match people up to getting a group together to create a new vision.
What’s your wish for improving your work?
USF’s Research Development Institute was originally tasked with getting faculty together, but we realized that to do this successfully we needed to think more holistically about building a research ecosystem around them. We’ve been trying to figure out what those strategies look like across not only federal, philanthropic, industry, and local but how you build the resources around them. What are the different components of building mini research ecosystems?
We have mostly just started. We have so much to still learn. We would love someday to be able to create a multi-institutional ecosystem here in Florida, across the state. Our ability to do that will grow with time.
How could our organization take steps to improve?
The FL-RDA organization is very responsive and organic in how it develops. FL-RDA’s work is intentional about supporting ourselves (its members) in professional development. Maybe we can better showcase ways our institutions or offices are collaborating, such as through regional grant programs and initiatives.
Or another idea that could work alongside regional collaborations would be to offer trainings that other professional organizations are not currently offering. I wonder how we can move beyond the typical professional organization to better enable statewide networking. How do we combine team science practices and tools with the resources (such as personnel, facilities, and others) of FL-RDA member institutions?
What role could you see playing someday in the Florida Alliance?
I am currently involved in the FL-RDA Mentoring Committee. In the future I’d like to explore other committees as well, first learning more about the committees’ work and then possibly moving into chair positions.