Director's Message

Director's Message 2010

Driven by excellent expense management in the year 2010, the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) sustained slow financial recovery. We estimate that we will not fully recover financially until the year 2014. Accordingly, ACS PRF continues its cost-saving actions by only considering proposals in our four core fundamental research grant programs: New Directions (ND) grants, Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grants, Undergraduate Research (UR) grants, and Undergraduate New Investigator (UNI) grants. All non-core ACS PRF grant programs remained suspended, new grant programs were not initiated, and no grant programs were expanded. The suspended non-core grant programs are the Scientific Education (SE), Summer Research Fellowships (SRF), Supplements for Underrepresented Minority Research (SUMR) and Undergraduate Faculty Sabbatical (UFS) grants. In addition, the fundamental research proposals are considered at only two Advisory Board meetings each calendar year. Though austere, these programmatic actions have kept ACS PRF financially stable, yet active as a funding agency for “starter” (i.e., DNI and UNI) and “seed money” (i.e., ND and UR) grants.

For fiscal year 2010 the ACS Petroleum Research Fund held two ACS PRF Advisory Board meetings to consider and evaluate fundamental research proposals in our four core grant programs. The total number of requests considered at the two meetings was 609 proposals. Awards by grant type combined from the two meetings are: 29 New Directions (ND) grants ($2.90 million), 64 Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grants ($6.40 million), 13 Undergraduate Research (UR) grants ($0.85 million), and 25 Undergraduate New Investigator (UNI) grants ($1.25 million). Despite the slow recovery of the financial markets, for FY 2010 the ACS Petroleum Research Fund was able to award grants to 131 proposals that were funded, with a combined total of $11.40 million. The FY 2010 grants were funded without having to draw any funds from the ACS PRF Reserve and instead, more than $9.3 million was added to the ACS PRF Reserve. We are proud of these accomplishments, for ACS PRF remains financially stable and now has almost enough financial reserves to withstand another crisis in the financial markets.

The American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund will continue to face financial challenges for the next several years. However, we are committed to continue to support the four core fundamental research grant programs (ND, DNI, UR, and UNI) through these challenging times. We believe it is vital to the science and engineering community to maintain continual support for fundamental research in the petroleum field as we financially recover.

The two major downturns of the financial markets in the last decade because of 9/11 and the 2008/2009 recession confirmed the need for long-term financial planning for ACS PRF. Accordingly, we are pursuing a number of ideas on how to grow the Fund so that we can: 1) support additional worthwhile proposals in "advanced scientific education and fundamental research in the petroleum field," 2) increase the award amounts for each grant program, and 3) bring the ACS PRF Reserve to a level that would be able to withstand any new financial crises. I will be reporting more about this effort in subsequent Director’s messages. Our ultimate goal is to enhance the significant impact we have in promoting world class research in the petroleum field.

Ronald E. Siatkowski, Ph.D., FAIC
Director, Office of Research Grants
and The ACS Petroleum Research Fund