It is my pleasure to introduce the research activities that are described in the following pages where some activities within each department are highlighted. These stories can give you a feel for the ground-breaking work being done by the faculty and graduate students in COSAM. Hopefully, you have also been enjoying other research articles presented in e-Journey, COSAM’s electronic newsletter.

It has been a difficult year in terms of the extramural funding that has been awarded to COSAM faculty, being 20 percent below the five-year average. It is well documented that the traditional government sources for research dollars have suffered cut-backs, and more recently have been affected by sequestration. The agencies affected, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense, are all critical to COSAM researchers. In such challenging times, it is helpful that our faculty have been also looking at non-traditional avenues to fund their research, some successfully allying with industry to fuel their work. Even with these limitations, you can see that the faculty continue to produce leading and innovative research.

COSAM graduate students continue to play a vital role in the research mission of the college. This is reflected in the recognition they have received at the university level, with three master’s students and two PhD students receiving Outstanding Graduate Student awards from the Graduate School over the past two years, and last year a COSAM doctorate and a master’s student were each awarded a Distinguished Dissertation/Thesis Award.

We are looking forward to better times ahead, especially as the national agencies settle on their priorities and, hopefully, stress the areas that affect COSAM the most. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is one such area where we have a leading role to play, galvanizing both research and outreach in ways that affect all levels of education.