Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Program Planning Committee, we warmly welcome you from all over the world to the 14th Annual Pre-Award Research Administration Conference in the beautiful city of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We are privileged to be co-chairs of this important conference.

Traveling to Puerto Rico is one of the best ways you can help the island recover from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.  The conference theme, Sustaining Research ... together! has been carefully chosen to mark Puerto Rico’s continuing sustainable recovery.  Our theme also reflects the contributions you make toward building a sustainable research environment at our institutions and throughout our profession.  Our vision for the future is to create even greater value to all corners of the globe.

We have an exciting program for the conference that will allow members to reflect upon and celebrate our past accomplishments, renew friendships and extend our networks, and jointly explore current and future research administration directions.  NCURA’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is being highlighted throughout the sessions.  PRA2020 will feature many new faces to the NCURA presentation platform as well as inter-institutional collaborative proposals that will sustain your desire for broad perspectives on complex issues. 

Jonathan Marvel, Puerto-Rican born architect, will deliver the keynote address.  Immediately after Hurricane Maria hit, Jonathan and his partners co-founded Resilient Power Puerto Rico (RPPR) in an effort to address Puerto Rico’s complete loss of power by bringing distributed solar generating capacity to the island.  Jonathan will speak to the need for sustainability due to climate change for Puerto Rico and for the world.

After two days immersing yourselves in workshops, concurrent sessions and discussion groups, we trust you will leave the conference thinking differently, planning differently, and acting differently, equipped to return to your institutions with new tools and ideas to help you sustain research.

Throughout the conference, we ask you to stay engaged, sustain a proactive mindset, and help shape the future of Research Administration.  We hope you will have a productive and fun-filled time at this very special conference. 

Sustaining research … together!

Anthony Beckman and Gai Doran