Complex and competitive, but also collaborative and multidisciplinary, research at UCLA is thriving. Last year alone, the university brought in $655 million in research funds, making it the No. 1 public university in the nation in research dollars, and among the top three public and private universities.

Managing the thousands of research projects represented by this immense figure, while simultaneously seeking out new opportunities and - the latest trend in research - mounting major multidisciplinary efforts, is a daunting challenge.

To better coordinate these tasks, Vice Chancellor for Research Roberto Peccei recently created a Research Cabinet, with the appointment of four new associate vice chancellors for research from across the campus: English Professor Katherine Hayles, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Chih-Ming Ho, Anderson School Professor John Mamer and School of Medicine Professor Leonard Rome.

"At UCLA, one of our strengths is our breadth," Peccei said. This very complexity, however, has "made it more difficult to recognize parallel efforts and take advantage of important synergies," he said. "It is very important to have a broader overview of campus." The new associate vice chancellors - "all of them first-class scholars with wonderful research programs of their own," Peccei added - will provide his office with insights into their own and related areas of expertise.

Also serving on the new Research Cabinet are associate vice chancellors Andrew Neighbour, who directs the Office of Research Administration (ORA), and Martha Krebs, director of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Peccei also announced plans to strengthen the Strategic Research Initiatives Group, co-directed by Elisabeth Johnson and Janette Miller.

"These changes," Peccei said, "will provide a more appropriate and energetic campus response to today's challenging research environment."

Meet the key players:

KATHERINE HAYLES

Professor of English, Hayles oversees research in the humanities and the visual and performing arts. Scholarship in these areas, she said, focuses increasingly on digital media. "UCLA is emerging as a major player in media art and culture," Hayles said. Author of an award-winning book, "How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics," Hayles helped bring about the recent relocation of the Electronic Literature Organization, which promotes literature developed for electronic media, from Chicago to UCLA. Projects such as these, Hayles said, "enable vast new realms for creative expression and analysis. Scholarship is only beginning to come to terms with the new aesthetic challenges raised by digital media."

CHIH-MING HO

Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Ho keeps tabs on research for engineering and the physical sciences. Propelling leading-edge research in these areas are biotechnologies that incorporate tiny micro- and nano-engineering systems; genomic research using engineering technologies; artificial materials; and quantum and molecular computing. Scientists see multidisciplinary research as the driving force for breakthroughs. "Interdisciplinary research by life scientists and engineers already has demonstrated many exciting results," Ho said. For example, experts in fluidic engineering, surface chemistry and molecular biology are working together to develop an ultra-sensitive DNA sensor. To keep pace with the ever-quickening march of technology is the challenge, he noted. "Researchers also have to have the vision to provide direction in leading change," often into areas that do not exist currently.

JOHN MAMER

The hallmark of research for policy and the social sciences is diversity, according to Mamer, The Anderson School's professor of policy, who oversees research in these areas. "My role is to try to foster an environment where individual researchers can flourish, and at the same time, to identify research agendas that transcend individual and departmental boundaries." Helping researchers from different disciplines connect is his goal. But he also seeks to link research more closely with the real world. "We have many great researchers and the capability to produce new research at an astonishing rate. I am keen to understand better how we can bring our research prowess to bear on emerging real-world problems." The benefits will flow both ways, he said: "Our research will improve decision-making on critical issues, and an engagement in real-world problems will improve our research."

LEONARD ROME

One of the most exciting and robust areas of research, the life and health sciences, is where Rome, senior associate dean for research in the School of Medicine, is guiding the way. In labs on the southern half of campus, research work in such areas as genome sequences and the interplay between proteins and their function in complex systems is ongoing. Researchers in these fields, Rome said, face "an overload of information - gene sequences, microarray data, images and more." So UCLA is in the midst of an explosive growth in multidisciplinary fields such as bioinformatics - high-end computing to manage, analyze and make use of massive amounts of biological information. "The greatest strength of UCLA is that we have a 'complete' scientific campus with medical, engineering, public health, social, physical and life sciences all together - and all working together," Rome said.

MARTHA KREBS

Krebs heads CNSI, a joint enterprise of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. CNSI was established last year to facilitate nanoscience research in areas ranging from information technology to molecular medicine as a boost to California's tech industries and economy. While researchers in all of the sciences are now capable of exploring phenomena and systems at the nanometer scale, Krebs said, "The greatest challenge ... is one of learning the languages of other disciplines."

Researchers from across the scientific spectrum will be developing the experimental, theoretical and computational tools with which to describe, control and predict nanoscale properties. They also will be creating nanoscale materials and devices that combine physical, chemical and biological components and interactions into far-reaching systems.

"We can already imagine broad impacts of nanotechnology on human life," Krebs said. On the near horizon could be molecular computers, highly efficient lighting and energy-conversion technologies based on nanoscale devices and coatings.

ANDREW NEIGHBOUR

Neighbour is director of the Office of Research Administration (ORA), which administers all research contracts and grants via the recently merged Office of Contracts and Grants, Extramural Fund Management, and related information-system support groups. His office also oversees technology transfer and intellectual property management.

The merger, said Neighbour, "serves to bring all of these areas in closer alignment with the needs of UCLA researchers." ORA assists researchers with applying for and managing research funding, navigating complex policies and regulations and partnering with the for-profit commercial sector. It also helps faculty work with industry to advance early-stage research on discoveries not yet ready for the marketplace, and assists them with the myriad legal complexities regarding ownership rights, contractual conflicts and the development and marketing of products that use UCLA's intellectual property.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES RESEARCH GROUP

Co-directors Elisabeth Johnson and Janette Miller are charged with developing, coordinating, monitoring and publicizing multidisciplinary research opportunities on the north and south campus, respectively.

Johnson envisions "unrealized research potential both from the vantage point of attracting funding - the north campus has been historically underfunded - and from the vantage point of developing multidisciplinary and collaborative projects."

One such project, an international collaborative effort, is the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, led by Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Professor Robert Englund, which will make the earliest written records of humankind, dating from 3200 B.C., available to scholars for the first time digitally via the Internet.

Three major new areas of inquiry are emerging: multidisciplinary studies of social and behavioral implications for health; a focus on research in Los Angeles as a living laboratory; and digital media.

In the southern half of campus, said Miller, "UCLA has been extremely successful in competing in a research environment geared toward the single investigator, single department and single funding source.

"However, now teams of scientists from various disciplines can best address major research problems," said Miller, who envisions a continued convergence of the information, engineering, physical, life and medical sciences.

Miller is helping to establish the Center for Embedded Networked Computing, led by Computer Science Professor Deborah Estrin, aimed at developing technologies such as micro-sensors, micro-actuators and low-power wireless communications to observe and control the physical world, from the ocean and atmosphere to buildings and vehicles.