Public U Leaders Spotlight: Susan Martinis

Your Name: Susan Martinis
Your Title: Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation
Your Institution: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Year You Started Your Current Role: 2017

What’s the most exciting work your APLU Council or Commission is currently undertaking?
Fixing up the CoR bylaws! Seriously, we have continued to develop deliberate mentorship programs for new or aspiring senior research leaders.  We are also actively diving into the rapidly evolving field of AI—and generative AI—to understand how to embrace this technology in transformative, ethical, and impactful ways.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing individuals in your role on campus?
Despite budget cuts at some agencies, unprecedented federal investment in applied research and innovation remains and demands our partnership with the private sector and government to make good on the impact for the taxpayers who are ultimately footing the bill.  As for challenges—hands down are the rising cost of research that are likely going to transform our academic research ecosystems over the next decade, with graduate students and post-docs, as well as supplies and sophisticated equipment, becoming unaffordable. This will seriously compromise the scope of research grants and their critical role in building our STEM workforce pipeline.

What are the most important and valuable partnerships on campus for individuals in your role? 
Research and Innovation occupy just about every niche on campus.  We partner with our interdisciplinary institutes, colleges, facilities and services, communications and marketing, advancement, public engagement, the international office, technology services, the Graduate College, the Provost, and so many more….

Describe your university in three words:
Interdisciplinary, Collaborative, Catalyst

What makes your university great?
We very effectively mobilize interdisciplinary teams and partners to reach over the rainbow to imagine big projects, and then bring them to life with great impact!

What experience best prepared your current role?
The Big10 Academic Alliance and my own campus provide outstanding professional development opportunities for academic leadership.

If you could go back and give yourself advice on the first day of your job, what would you say?
The view over the campus research and innovation ecosystem is like being a kid in a candy shop – pace yourself and look to your team for guidance.

What is the best book you’ve read recently?
“Boys in the Boat” is a true underdog story of 1936 Olympic champions who succeeded through intense, coordinated teamwork, in the backdrop of a changing world.

What was the last thing you cooked or baked?
My daughter has discovered that she actually likes pineapple while in her first year of college in California, so I baked a pineapple-upside down cake—my own childhood family favorite.  She loved it!

What is the last concert you attended?
The CASCaDE Quantum Productions: Where the Arts Meets Physics, Quantum Entango, and the interactive Contemplating the Universe.