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[MUSIC] My name is Bobby Bringi, I'm with the college of engineering here at MSU. I'm Dan Clay. I'm a Professor of International Development in the department of Community Sustainability, College of Agriculture and Natural resources. My name is Irvin Widders. I'm a professor of Horticulture at Michigan State. My focus is been on vegetable crop physiology and since two thousand, the year Two thousand, I've been director of legume innovation lab at Michigan State. I'm Cristian Meghea. I'm an assistant professor in the department of (something) gynecology and reproductive biology in the college of Human Medicine, here at Michigan State University, and also affiliated (Bobish Bouy) in (someplace) Romania. [MUSIC] I'm an engineer by training and a develop technologies in the field of biotechnology or agricultural technologies. so this project that I'm working on takes a residue from agriculture, the straw that's usually left on the fields or even burnt in many countries and we take this material and then we convert it by afax technology, which is the technology that we're working on into these pellets. what happens is that after this processing this material is much more digestible to cattle. In poor countries this material is used directly as a cattle feed but by feet by converting it to these pellets and feeding them, we are able to increase the productivity in the health of the cattle. generally speaking, it's in the areas of food security and economic growth internationally in particular in in Rwanda and Burundi and in Africa. so I am not a researcher per se although I was in my previous professional life. I provide technical direction to this program, we have a portfolio of ten projects that are focusing on many different disciplines about two thirds of our engagement is an African countries and about the third and Latin American Caribbean countries. the goals of the program are to generate new knowledge and technologies that can improve the welfare of smolder farmers around the world. my primary research interest is maternal and child health, if you go global, collaborative community based in interdisciplinary approach. The broad goal of the research is essentially to use the prenatal/ postnatal period as a window opportunity to improve the long term health of families. And what I'm doing is the zoning implementing evaluating interventions focus on the back of this role. More and more, These projects are getting international in scope that is because the solutions are in one place and the needs can be all over the world. So in order to test solutions, you know we have to be able to do it in different countries. For example, in this project this is a material that's burned in South Asia and at the same time there is also ,a shortage of cattle feed, so by converting this material to a cattle feed we might be able to solve two problems. However, solving those problems sitting here in East Lansing isn't very easy. So we must set up relationships with parties that are in different countries and then we have to manage those projects effectively and successfully. It's kind of like having an orchestra except the but the violin players are in East Lansing and the viola players are in India somewhere and so yet we have to be able to play together and create music. I'm talking about partnerships that I have with Romanian community partners, clinics, physicians, researchers, government, or non-governmental partners there and also co-investigators, with other researchers in the United States, who are interested and have expertise in international research. The quality of our partners are the experience of our partners in country, and also the level of support we get both through faculty here on campus but just as much our administrative support is enormously important. It's through the what we generate are the outputs of our research. Clearly, the greatest impact that we've had is through improved varieties. Varieties that have traits that enable them to be more high yielding, that enable farmers to escape or have something to eat during the hunger period. Which is a consequence of the long dry periods in Africa, when they can't grow anything in and they run out of their food source, shortages. We focus a lot on climate resilience or resilience to dramatic events whether it's a hurricane or drought or whatever. Varieties that are better adapted to the stresses that the farmers may encounter and certainly varieties that are demanded by the markets to an able farmers to be able to sell their product and generate an income. [MUSIC] It used to be that we almost always had, for a larger program we almost always had in country presence in country office but now that's changed. We are putting more as I mentioned on our responsibility on our in country partners many of them don't have a lot of experience. Many of them are relatively new, relatively small and do not have the kind of administrative support. Often the technical support is weak in and so it makes that makes it a big challenge for us and then it's a matter of often coordinating our administrative style, our policies and so forth, with their policy. And another major challenge is just communication not only communicating, you know I have to have called at seven thirty in the morning, which are five pm in India and not only do we have to do that but also the scope changes in a project what each party has to do changes and so therefore, from up from a project management perspective we have to be able, to be able to alter the scope, work through the contracts and make sure that all the controls that have been put into place, you know, favored the execution rather than hindering execution. The challenge is that this is a never ending task and it requires an incredible amount of resources, to train a graduate student at a US university in a Ph D. program requires four, five years at minimum. When they go back to set up a laboratory, it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars our program doesn't have hundreds of thousand dollars no one does and developing countries, these institutions are weak because they receive very limited federal support, If there in a National Agricultural Research Institution. The problem is with universities around the world they don't have a land grant vision, a mentality like the you US system does. Developing countries they're primarily academic institutions, they're not research intensive institutions. what strengthens and makes our academic program so special is that our faculty are also and actively engaged in research and they can bring the most modern science knowledge technology and share that in the classroom. In developing countries we have wonderfully trained professors but they're not out in the field solving problems and so we have to do change our culture. First one it comes to mind and it's always through limited resources that's per the idea of doing research and I mean global health research in. The funding that they receive the most of the funding available is to do research in lower middle income countries Romania as not anymore low income countries middle income but still limited resources in terms of funding, in terms of the research skills that their local researchers have. Briefly you know when I started in two thousand and seven over there, I keep saying this but it's true it was, the center director that I work with two graduate students and a desk. I could go on and on with limited resources, you know the fact that my Nationalized health funding the project that I got funded there, share of research, I mean the share of the budget that I could spend on research and actually paid a local team was extremely small, we adapted. you probably heard in the news there were proposals to reduce or essentially cut global health funding at NIH. Fortunately that that didn't happen actually funding went up a little bit. I also not being on the research side, I mean that's always a challenge over there, for me not because of that much of a challenge I mean that's my hometown and one of the requirements of my NIH funding funded project was to actually be there, will be there for extended periods of time which made complete sense. I mean I just returned after almost a year and a half there which helped a lot. when one had I mentioned it was easy easier to connect with you know policymakers politicians and non-governmental stakeholders but on the other hand it's just hard to inform health policy, I mean people in power, politicians essentially they're just not willing to take into account the facts findings. It goes hand in hand with corruption with you know big tobacco money. Just not much different probably from what used to go here to go on here thirty forty years ago. [MUSIC] There are two aspects of administration of a program that are equally important. It's the technical leadership that I provide, I have to be the visionary, I have to anticipate what are the technologies, what is the research it's going to be game changing but likewise if we can't administer the financial and contractual aspects of these programs. Fall flat on their face as they shared, earlier one of the difficult challenges that we face is working with weak institutions abroad and they're weak administratively they don't have the capacity that in Michigan State would have and sponsor programs whether it's pre award, post award, financial management, even the notion of an institution compiling receipts and sending those with an invoice to get reimbursed. That's incredibly difficult. I brought my team there, I have only great word to say about them, they're skilled hardworking, quick learners most of them graduate students but I value them and they're really I rely on them especially when I'm not there. Starting with the Pre award staffs (them in) support that I receive that departmental level, at the college level, university level, it was extremely easy to put things together into the proposal budget. Then submit everything. The fact that we had to do sub-contract, sub-award went into the international university not an issue, anything we needed to resolve and find a way we did, I got to help. Tremendous support, post award so after I got the funding. Again, departmental level ,college university level, We always find a way I mean any issues and problems I have, expenses, how to pay for this how to pay for that, how to ship some things over there, how to get reimbursed for some expenses that I had to make, were not that I had anticipate, never an issue, we always found ways and I mean from the research, the administration staff was key, the counterparts over in Romania. They were helped tremendously by the MSU staff and there were things that they had no idea how to do and we always on the way. In in our project we had about five different parties all of which had to work together and these were all international in scope and so the international studies programs actually helped us in the first instance educating me about you know how these projects work from an administrative point of view but then helping us to put a very successful project together and now we're working on the next an extension you know into twenty eighteen so I would say Yes MSU is a great place in that regard because we have so many international activities that you know we are able to put complex teams and proposals together and actually have to work effectively. I'd also like to say the project sponsor has a very very important role to play in this so for example we work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on this project, and they have been extremely understanding in terms of having allowing us to react to what we have learn, to change what we do next and that freedom to do that is extremely importation. The administrative project support is really our life blood. The funding is our life blood, the administration support it all goes through are systems here on campus, so many of our projects, its finances, policy, the compliance with particular rules and regulations of a given funding agency and there are a lot of different ones, so its not keeping up on all of those is really challenging and that's where good administrative support really comes in and can help us in so many ways. [MUSIC]

Making It Real, Part II

From Erin Schlicher May 11th, 2018  

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