Matthew Miller – Bloomberg School of Public Health: Department of Epidemiology (EPI)
Research Administration Excellence Award
I was first hired by Johns Hopkins University in August of 2000 as an entry-level administrative Budget Assistant in the Department of Epidemiology. Since then, I have remained with Epidemiology and the Bloomberg School of Public Health for my entire 25-year tenure at Johns Hopkins, rising recently to the level of Senior Financial Manager in November of 2022.
I have 2 areas which I consider my “favorite aspect.” The first is being considered a university-wide content expert in a particular niche of grants management, specifically training grant mechanisms. My other favorite aspect is mentoring young graduate students to submit their first extramural fellowship grant proposal. It is a pleasure to council them through the process to help them fully understand the complexities and gain valuable experience which will aid some of them for future pursuits in a successful career in academia. Throughout my tenure in Epidemiology, I have assisted our students in the successful funding of over 50 individual fellowships from various sponsoring agencies
Spanning a period between 2008 and 2013, I was sponsored by the NIH Fogarty International Center to conduct a series of international administrative training seminars in counties such as Uganda, Malawi, and Brazil. The purpose of these trainings was to improve the administrative capacity of our partnering institutions (such as Makerere University School of Public Health) from where we had historically trained scientists in various disciplines of public health for over 20 years with Fogarty financial grant support. The experiences were not only rewarding to the institutions where I gave trainings but also to me personally, from all my exposures to these exciting countries, their warm people, and enriching cultures. Some of the relationships and bonds I formed continue to this day.
I currently serve as a senior administrative staff representative on the BSPH Research Council. Faculty consistently report being confronted by a barrage of administrative and bureaucratic challenges which distract from their core academic pursuits. Research teams, often struggling to conduct their experiments, recruit participants and analyze data, have expressed a sense of isolation and lack of support. Our School’s Research Council recognizes these frustrations and seeks to engage our research community to work together towards a collective response. The research@BSPH Ecosystem aims to foster an interdependent sense of community among faculty researchers, their research teams, administration and staff partnered to leverage knowledge and develop shared responses. Moreover, the Research Council, founded in 2020, seeks to advise, and coordinate research efforts across the School. As a School Committee, the Research Council’s role is to study the current status of research matters, evaluate strengths/weaknesses, and identify strategies to improve research practice across the School.