Mission

The mission of the Institute is to be a trusted resource for high quality data that supports independent, frontier research on science and innovation in the service of the public interest. The institute is focused on working with the research community to advance agendas targeting the contribution of science to economic growth, the structure and aging of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) workforce, the production of biomedical science, and the development of theoretically grounded measures of the social networks that link investigators, topics, and organizations to one another.

Consortium History

The Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) is a university consortium established in 2015, located at the University of Michigan

Structure & Governance

IRIS members contribute data, support infrastructure and receive campus-specific and aggregate reports. Research nodes are responsible for helping to define scientific goals, develop a research community, and make material improvements to the core data. Current nodes include:
- Big Ten Academic Alliance, (Barbara McFadden Allen)
- New York University, (Julia Lane)
- Ohio State University / National Bureau of Economic Research, (Bruce Weinberg)
- University of Chicago, (James Evans)
- U.S. Census Bureau, (Ron Jarmin)

Approved nodes materially improve data, develop products, and expand user communities. Once data has been de-identified, approved users are able to access secure datasets from nodes or from organizations that partner with IRIS.

Core IRIS operations occur at:
- University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (Jason Owen-Smith, IRIS Executive Director)
- IRIS UM Staff

Financing

Intellectual Property

Public elements (e.g. grants, publications, patents) are made available; more sensitive elements are subject to security provisions. Links to Census data are only accessible through Census Research Data Centers. All of our work is built around common identifiers so that researchers can add elements to the data, with the expectation that linked elements will be accessible later for future researchers.”

Data Sharing

Impact/Accomplishment

IRIS expands the UMETRICS Initiatives (Universities: Measuring the Impacts of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness and Science), which demonstrated that universities can leverage and link their own administrative data to better understand their research portfolios, document economic impact, and generate new scholarly findings.

Since 2013, some 63 researchers have accessed UMETRICS data under strict confidentiality protections to pursue research projects that analyze the career outcomes of graduate students, the dynamics and consequences of an aging scientific workforce, the optimal structure of scientific research teams, the contributions of academic discoveries to food safety and security, and entrepreneurship by faculty, staff, and students.

Research projects sparked by UMETRICS were supported by six grants totaling nearly $10 million from three federal science agencies. These projects produced peer-reviewed articles in Science and Research Policy, as well as aggregate and campus-level reports that participating institutions used effectively in outreach to boards of regents and trustees, and to state and federal legislators.

Links/Social Media Feed

Points of Contact

Jason Owen-Smith
IRIS Executive Director
jdos@umich.edu
 
Institute for Research on Innovation and Science
University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research
Survey Research Center
426 Thompson St, 3318 ISR
Ann Arbor, MI, 48106-1248
P: (734) 615-0015
F: (734) 936-0548
IRIS-info@umich.edu
iris.isr.umich.edu

Membership Inquiries and Operations:
Nancy Calvin-Naylor, IRIS Managing Director
(734) 615-7464 nbirk@umich.edu

Technical Issues:
Kevin Bjorne, IRIS Technical Director
(734) 936-0465 kbjorne@umich.edu

Researcher Access:
Natsuko Nicholls, IRIS Data Manager
(734) 763-0447 hayashin@umich.edu

Scheduling Requests:
Evalyn Yanna, IRIS Administrative Assistant
(734) 615-0015 eyanna@umich.edu

Contracts, Invoicing and Pre and Post-Grant Administration:
Karen Woollams, IRIS Research Coordinator
(734) 936-0444 woollams@umich.edu

Sponsors & Partners