Academic and Research Excellence Update
December 11, 2025
Dear colleagues,
As the holidays approach, we are pleased to share this quarterly update on Purdue’s efforts to support, reward, and celebrate scholarly impact and research excellence. These updates are also opportunities to highlight strategic approaches—such as partnerships—that help drive our collective success.
Purdue continues to expand academic and research partnerships that accelerate our work and broaden funding opportunities. These collaborations amplify our impact across the state, the nation, and beyond while creating meaningful opportunities for faculty and students.
This is evident in our growing number of master research agreements and partnerships with companies and U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories. These not only advance science and technology but also open new avenues for our faculty and students to contribute to national priorities. Meanwhile Purdue’s reputation as a trusted partner in solving the country’s most pressing challenges is strengthened.
As many of these stem from faculty-driven collaborations, individual projects and joint proposals that grew into lasting institutional relationships, we want to thank you for your leadership, initiative and commitment to advancing the public good.
Dan DeLaurentis, Executive Vice President for Research
Chris Ruhl, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Patrick Wolfe, Provost
Key Updates for Faculty and Staff
Purdue University Books Initiative. Purdue authors are finishing a strong year in terms of publishing. So far at least 115 new academic books by Purdue authors are on the shelves, and more than 700 projects are underway.
The university offers a range of central and college-level resources to support scholarly publishing, including the Purdue University Books Initiative and the Purdue Publisher Webinar Series. Incentives are currently available to authors who can complete their manuscript by December 2026.
Launched a year ago, the Purdue University Books Initiative provides robust support for authors through substantive overload or discretionary payments and individualized support services like graphic design, permissions and proofreading. This service is available for different types of projects, such textbooks and research monographs, but also adaptations of lecture notes into books, collections of case studies, dissertation-to-book conversions, and new editions of existing works.
In addition, the Purdue Publisher Webinar series connects prospective authors with a variety of publishing houses and offers insights into the publishing process. Whether you're working on your first manuscript or your next major project, the Purdue Books team is ready to help bring your book from idea to ISBN. Details are available at https://purdue.link/books.
Faculty, staff and students interested in publishing are encouraged to complete this brief author survey or email Cristina Farmus for more information.
Office of Industry Partnerships to hold information coffee sessions. Beginning in January, the Office of Industry Partnerships will hold recurring open sessions focused on promoting industry collaborations. Faculty members are invited to bring their questions about working with corporate partners and how to make successful connections with industry. Participants will gain insights into best practices, emerging trends and strategies to strengthen connections between academia and industry. Stay tuned for more scheduling details about these walk-in sessions or contact the OIP team at OIP@purdue.edu.
PERA rollout completed on schedule through excellent collaboration across Purdue. The Office of Research is pleased to announce a major milestone: the successful completion of the Purdue Excellence in Research Administration (PERA) initiative.
PERA modernizes research administration through six Huron Research Suite modules — Grants, Agreements, IACUC, IBC/Safety, IRB and COC/COI — replacing legacy systems (COEUS and Cayuse) and automating paper-based Safety and Export Control processes. With PERA fully implemented, Purdue is already seeing key benefits: streamlined workflows, enhanced compliance and improved support for faculty and researchers.
Fully completed, this rollout required 31 months and was achieved through excellent collaboration among more than 50 project team members and hundreds of contributors from over 20 major units. Thank you, and congratulations to everyone who contributed to making PERA a success!
Even Huron noted this accomplishment: “Purdue’s achievement in implementing a six-module HRS suite for PERA in record time is truly remarkable. This milestone reflects the strength of Purdue’s exceptional functional leaders, crisp decision-making, strong internal IT capabilities, as well as the outstanding program leadership and governance that guided every phase of the implementation.”
For system-specific questions, contact perahelp@purdue.edu.
Strong progress on master research agreements. Purdue’s research collaborations are continuing to expand in number and scope. The number of active master research agreements (MRA) is currently at a record high of 63. This includes seven new MRAs — and six renewed MRAs — signed since the fiscal year began on July 1.
Major research collaborations include critical fields such as defense/aerospace, pharmaceutical manufacturing, life sciences, semiconductors and AI.
New MRAs were established with leading organizations such as BASF, Chevron, Fourth Offset, Los Alamos National Laboratory and MediaTek while others were extended or renewed with 3M, Bayer, Elanco, Lockheed Martin and more. With 22 potential new MRAs and seven possible renewals in negotiations, Purdue’s future growth of major research collaborations is very positive.
Partnerships with national laboratories create new possibilities for faculty and students. Purdue’s legacy of collaborating with U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories, which goes back to the Manhattan Project, is continuing and even expanding today. In the past couple of years, we have increased the areas of research partnerships and opened new opportunities for our research teams.
Purdue now has collaboration agreements with Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamo National Laboratory, Fermilab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. These combine Purdue’s world-class research infrastructure and deep research expertise with the labs’ mission-driven expertise and secure facilities.
Purdue and DOE researchers lead projects in semiconductors, AI and advanced computing, hypersonics, advanced energy and nuclear technologies, cybersecurity, energetics, quantum, and advanced manufacturing — areas critical to maintaining technological superiority.
In addition to creating joint faculty appointment opportunities, these partnerships open new professional opportunities for students, who gain access to real-world missions, mentorships from federal experts, and experience working in classified and export-controlled research environments — preparing them to lead in government, academia and industry.
More information about Purdue’s DOE collaborations is available in a new Purdue-DOE information sheet or by emailing NationalLabs@purdue.edu.
Faculty Recognitions
Researchers honored with Seed for Success Acorn Awards. On Nov. 19, Purdue honored 231 researchers across 100 research projects with the university’s prestigious Seed for Success Acorn Awards.
The annual event recognizes research projects — and the Purdue principal investigators and co-investigators who lead them — that were awarded external research funding of $1 million or more for a single proposal. This year’s honorees included 74 first-time award recipients.
“It’s a significant milestone to be awarded $1 million in funding,” said Dan DeLaurentis, Purdue’s executive vice president for research. “Purdue’s robust and growing research is a testament to the innovation and impact of our researchers, as evidenced by Purdue’s rising number of transformative partnerships.”
A full list of 2025 award recipients is available at the Seed for Success Acorn Awards webpage.
American Physical Society award. Congratulations to Michael Manfra, the Bill and Dee O’Brien Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, who was recently awarded the American Physical Society’s 2026 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize, which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics.
NSF CAREER Awards. Congratulations are also due to the following associate professors who received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2025:
- Antonio Bianchi, computer science
- Kirsten Davis, engineering education
- Yuan Gao, mathematics
- Can Li, chemical engineering
- Lauren Metskas, biology and chemistry
- Caitlin Proctor, agricultural and biological engineering, sustainability engineering, and environmental engineering
Faculty Recognition Program. The Faculty Recognition Program is hosting a webinar on the nomination process for IEEE Fellow from 10-10:45 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10. Interested faculty members can join here. Also, the IEEE fellow portal is now open to accept nominations for the IEEE fellow class of 2027. The nomination deadline is Feb. 7.
Awards Database. Any faculty member can search for prestigious awards using the recently launched award opportunities database. To request assistance with a nomination, contact the Faculty Recognition Program at facultyawards@purdue.edu.
IRB spring open office hours announced. Chairs of the Institutional Review Board for human subjects and its associated processes hold regular office hours for researchers. Walk-in sessions are held on Wednesdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and Thursdays from 9:30-11:30 a.m. in Seng-Liang Wang Hall, Room 4559. More information is available online.
