New funding features in Research@MIT

Dear colleagues,

I’m pleased to let you know that enhanced financial features are now available in the Research@MIT app (access via web or MIT App Store). As a principal investigator (PI) or administrator, you will now have access to more detailed, real-time financial data for both the research and discretionary accounts you supervise. This functionality should reduce the administrative burden associated with monitoring expenses and make financial account management quicker and easier.

Key functionality

These updates include a global view of all financial accounts, both research and discretionary, assigned to each PI. From there, you can view:

• High-level financial summaries and detailed individual account views
• Current projections with a calculated burn rate for research accounts on a global and individual level
• Detailed personnel costs for all accounts

Importantly, the tool also incorporates a financial forecasting capability at the research account level to allow for scenario planning, and it allows you to create and save new views of accounts for future reference.

While these enhanced features don’t replace the detailed modeling PIs should continue to do with their local financial officers when needed, the ability to do initial scenario planning can support the decision making process. 

Where to access these features

Within Research@MIT, for PIs, these features are available in the Funding section. Administrators will be able to view the same information, at appropriate access levels, under the Principal Investigators section.

PIs have automatic access to the Funding section in Research@MIT. Administrators should fill out the Admin-PI Mapping spreadsheet and send it to ra-help@mit.edu so that the appropriate access to PI/supervisor account information can be granted. Learn more about accessing the funding and forecasting information on the Research@MIT webpage.

This project grew out of the modernization efforts led by the Business and Digital Transformation Office and is a collaboration between the Office of the Vice President for Research, IS&T, and the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Over the past two years, it expanded into an Institute-wide effort involving more than 20 DLCIs, with 300 PIs and 54 administrators participating in a pilot program that provided ongoing feedback. I’d like to thank all the DLCIs, PIs, and administrators who supported this project with their time and input.

Sincerely,

Anne White
Associate Vice President for Research Administration