The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a five-year, $67 million investment establishing the Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE) Center. The national SECURE Center grant will also encompass five regional hubs, including $6.4 million to fund SECURE Southeast, to be managed by Emory University.
Research security is a concern because some foreign entities attempt to unethically — or even unlawfully — access and use U.S. research.
As mandated in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, the national NSF SECURE Center, led by the University of Washington with support from nine institutions of higher education — including Emory — will serve as a clearinghouse for information empowering the research community to identify and mitigate foreign interference posing risks to the U.S. research enterprise.
“The United States invests billions of dollars in research,” says Robert Nobles, Emory vice president for research administration and a leader in the national initiative. “The SECURE Center is a whole new approach to help the entire nation protect its research assets. It will make sure that institutions large and small, public and private, have an opportunity to work together to build effective research compliance and security tools. We’re all really in this together.”
The SECURE Center will share information and reports on research security risks, provide training on research security to the science and engineering community and serve as a bridge between the research community and government funding agencies to strengthen cooperation on addressing security concerns.
“NSF is committed to principled international collaboration. At the same time, we must address threats to the research enterprise,” says Sethuraman Panchanathan, NSF director.
“The SECURE Center is how we are bringing the research community together to identify risks, share information and leverage national expertise on research security to develop solutions that protect essential research being done at institutions across the nation,” Panchanathan adds. “This is a community-focused platform, and the research community will be the drivers of how SECURE Center tools and services are designed, used and improved upon.”
To ensure that this approach to research security is community-designed, community-used and community-improved, the SECURE Center will also serve as the nexus for five regional centers to be managed by local universities.
Emory received $6.4 million of the NSF funding over five years to establish and manage SECURE Southeast. Deepika Bhatia, Emory associate vice president for research compliance and regulatory affairs and chief research security officer, is principal investigator for SECURE Southeast. Nobles will also play a role in the regional center, along with his national role.
“This grant recognizes Emory’s national leadership in research security,” says Deborah Bruner, Emory senior vice president for research, citing the positive impact of Nobles and Bhatia. “Their work, along with their teams, will allow Emory to both lead and to stay at the forefront of research security and research administration best practices. Emory is fortunate to have thought leaders who are distinguished throughout the research community and we are confident they will help shape this important national conversation.”
“The SECURE project allows us to build stronger research connections, both regionally and nationally,” says Bhatia, who will lead SECURE Southeast. “We will exchange ideas with institutional compliance professionals and researchers. By learning what will work for individuals from different institutions we can then help them to customize solutions to achieve the highest standard of research compliance and security.”
The additional regional hubs include: SECURE Northeast (Northeastern University), SECURE Midwest (University of Missouri), SECURE Southwest (University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas A&M University) and SECURE West (University of Washington).