Theme Music (00:01):

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Taylor Pardue (00:01):

Welcome to the NC State Philanthropy Podcast, telling the world how we Think and Do through the support of our friends, alumni and more. I’m your host, Taylor Pardue.

(00:18)
On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Krista Walton, vice chancellor for research and innovation, to talk about how her office furthers NC State’s extraordinary work. Thanks so much for joining us today, Krista. To kick things off, just tell listeners a little bit about yourself and what first brought you to NC State.

Krista Walton (00:52):

Yeah, thanks, Taylor. It’s great to be here. I came to NC State just a little over one year ago, so still pretty new, but got my legs under me better than I did if we had tried to do this last year. So, I came to NC State to be the vice chancellor for research and innovation as the chief research officer for campus. I’m a chemical engineer. I’ve been a faculty member for about 20 years now. So, I sort of grew up through the faculty ranks and doing my own research and getting funding, writing proposals, and that sort of led me into research leadership roles. First of all, as a center director for the Department of Energy, we had an energy frontier research center that I was director of at Georgia Tech where I was before here. And then, I slowly started the slippery slope into campus administration.

(01:41)
So, I was first associate dean for research for the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech, and then I was the AVP for research operations and infrastructure, and that’s the role I had when I was recruited here. So, my background growing up, I’m from North Alabama, rural Alabama. I grew up on a farm there, so I was the first in my family to go to college, so I didn’t dream about being a vice chancellor for research. I think I didn’t know that was a job back then, but I always loved science and math, and I had chemistry sets as a kid. I went to space camp. I went to computer camp, just to let you know what a big nerd I actually was when I was probably 10 or 12 years old. So, I’ve always been interested and my parents always supported all of those interests and made sure that I had opportunities that they wouldn’t even have known about when they were kids.

(02:34)
So, I think having that kind of upbringing and just the exposure that I had through a lot of those examples I just gave, it really led me to be a chemical engineer, first of all, and a high school chemistry teacher was very influential in my life, and I originally thought I would be a chemist, and she’s the one that actually encouraged me to think about chemical engineering, and I had worked with her a lot. So, as I’ve mentioned, I grew up in this rural town and we had Science Olympiad, which North Carolina I think has the largest Science Olympiad program in the country, as a state here. So, that’s administered by land-grant institutions. So, you know, I didn’t know what that meant when I was in middle school and high school, but Science Olympiad was very fun. It’s a team that forms from your middle school, high school, and you do these competitions that are regional, and then maybe if you win that, you go to a larger district one.

(03:28)
So, I was always involved in that. And so, that’s how my chemistry teacher was like, “I kind of think you might like engineering.” And so, that’s how I ended up in chemical engineering, but I didn’t expect necessarily to go to graduate school. So, during college, I was a co-op student, so that meant I worked full-time every other semester as a process engineer. The first semester was kind of fun, and then the second semester, I was like, “Oh no, this is maybe not for me.” It was a little bit boring, and so, by the time I did the third semester, I decided I really liked R&D, and so, that sort of helped push me to go on to do my Ph.D.

Taylor Pardue (04:08):

Sounds great. It’s the natural way to start a podcast by asking someone to introduce themselves, but I genuinely love hearing about the different pathways that lead people to NC State, and it sounds like, like you said, this was maybe not on your radar to begin with, but you had just the perfect upbringing and education and everything for this opportunity. So …

Krista Walton (04:28):

Yeah. And you know, as I sort of got into my academic career, the land-grant mission really resonates with me, you know, as a farm kid from Alabama. My dad still farms full-time in the farm I grew up on. And so, I think that that access is so important, and it’s places like NC State or, where I’m from, I believe it was Alabama A&M, Auburn, others, but those places provide access to people that maybe wouldn’t otherwise easily know how to get it. So, by the extension offices, by programs for the high schools. I mean, I was in 4-H. I think those kinds of things give you a chance and just help you know what’s out there — if you’re interested. Not everybody is, but yeah, I think the land-grant mission is just, there’s no way to overstate the importance that it has, I think, to residents throughout the country.

Taylor Pardue (05:22):

Absolutely. I’m so glad you said that about land-grant universities because I’ve been looking forward to this podcast, specifically, because I think your office is such a wonderful example of how a land-grant university gets the work that’s being done on campus out into the world — and that’s state, nation, world. I mean, there’s no bounds to what the research and everything going on here at NC State can do. You are only the sixth vice chancellor for your office, so all the more we’re excited to have you here today, but talk about what that role with your office is and, really, just what all it encompasses at a university at this level.

Krista Walton (05:56):

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, research is fundamental to our land-grant mission. It is one of the core pillars of this campus. We create knowledge, we are educating people, and then putting the expertise to work. We could do a whole podcast on the value, especially, of discovery and fundamental research.

Taylor Pardue (06:18):

Absolutely.

Krista Walton (06:18):

Which I don’t want to give us a side quest into that.

Taylor Pardue (06:22):

Next time.

Krista Walton (06:22):

Next time. But research that happens at universities, and especially at places like NC State, it improves lives, strengthens communities, advances national security. It can change agricultural or manufacturing practice. It informs policies. And then, literally, we’re creating technologies that spin out and provide the basis for new companies or get licensed by existing ones. So, there is a direct line from the things happening in our labs every day to the creations that make it out into society. And I think that is so important.

(07:02)
And at a place like NC State, especially, our breadth means that we can bring engineering and technology and agriculture and textiles and veterinary medicine. You know, sciences, design, the social sciences. All of these things coexist here on this campus, and that’s not the kind of thing that is replicated in any other type of institution in the country. So, universities, I think, have a real sacred mission to further discovery, human discovery, and to work on hard problems that the whole point is that we don’t know the answers yet. And especially with our Ph.D. students, our doctoral students, they are the engine of this, and having excellent labs and facilities and faculty who are at the cutting edge, and then we’re bringing in these doctoral students who they personally create new knowledge themselves that add to it, and then they finish their degrees and they move on, and then they’re going to continue being creators and discoverers and explorers of information as they move on into their careers.

(08:09)
I think it’s a mission that just doesn’t exist in other places, and having that runway for the risk tolerance and the runway to do risky things. We don’t have to worry right away about return on investment like a company would, and that’s really what separates us as a university is that we want to answer important questions, and sometimes it’s not clear what those answers might lead to, but as knowledge-creators, that’s sort of under our umbrella. And so, I think that makes a place like NC State really special, and a job like mine, which is really trying to oversee and enable the campus to be able to do this. I don’t set an agenda for what people do because that’s their creativity, their research. They come here with a mission to do and to work on certain things, but I want to provide the resources and the infrastructure and the support to make it as easy as possible for them to do these hard things, because they are very hard.

Taylor Pardue (09:13):

I want to come back to that in just a second, but I just wanted to note, thank you so much for mentioning social sciences, textiles, design. All the different colleges on our campus. Research is a part of all of that. I think a lot of times people hear that and they think maybe just STEM, or they hear “land grant,” and they think just CALS, just an agricultural thing. But really, the research that we do here on campus touches every side of campus, and just I think that’s really important. So, thank you for sharing that.

Krista Walton (09:40):

Yes, I think that’s very important also, and we talk a lot about numbers and research expenditures, and those things will always be important because that’s how we operate, that’s how we support our mission, but it does tend to be more skewed toward STEM just as a product of how we do research funding in this country. A lot of times when I’m trying to speak more broadly about our research mission, I like to also talk about scholarship, because scholarship is research; that’s part of our mission as well. You’re not going to get DOD funding for certain kinds of scholarship, but it’s still important, and that breadth and all of those things we just touched on, we are a comprehensive university, and I love that. I came here on purpose to be a part of that because I think that’s important and I want to help enable all the breadth that we have.

(10:34)
So, a lot of the conversation does get focused around science, engineering, agriculture, but every person on this campus doing research is important, and they need to be supported maybe in different ways. And so, as I start moving into my second year, those are conversations I’m excited to have. I’m meeting with the dean of CHASS next week. I mean, we’re looking to find new ways that we can support the scholarship on the campus, too.

Taylor Pardue (10:59):

That’s a perfect segue because, what all is involved in research with getting, you mentioned, federal grants, grants like that? And to your point of earlier, how do we make research easier for NC State?

Krista Walton (11:11):

Yeah. So, I’ll tell a little bit of a story here to help illustrate what I mean when I say, “We need to help make it easier.” So, if we go back in time, say, 20 years ago, when I was a baby professor, I was just starting. At that time, you built your research group. So, that means you’re given startup funding by the university because you obviously don’t come with anything. So, they give you a lab, they help you build up. If you’re an experimentalist like I am, you build your lab, you have equipment that you can buy and install that the university supports, and then they give you some seed funding to hire Ph.D. students. And those are your first people that you partner with, and especially when you’re brand-new like that, you’re close to a peer group with those people, because that was my first job.

(12:00)
But you start your lab up that way, and you don’t have any external funding yet, but the goal is that you will get it. So, at that time, when I’m writing my first few, you can think about at that time, each grant would usually fund maybe one Ph.D. student in about a month of your summer salary. Faculty get nine month salaries, right?

Taylor Pardue (12:18):

Yep.

Krista Walton (12:18):

So, if you’re doing research throughout the whole year, you have to fund your own salary in the summer. So, at that time, you submit what I think now is a very simple proposal. So, I come up with an idea, I write a 15-page proposal about it and how my student will be involved. This is my budget, and you submit that to, let’s say, the National Science Foundation. Those usually have a budget of, say, $300,000 to $500,000 for three years. Very simple. There’s no institutional commitment because they already committed to you, right?

(12:51)
They already gave you a lab. So, you get, maybe, a letter from your department head saying, “Yes, she has a lab. You’re legit,” and that’s it, and then you get funded. I built my career off of those kinds of grants 20 years ago. Today, faculty cannot do that, and it is much more complex. Now, you have, instead of a $300,000 grant that you’re applying for, that’s just me and my student, you have hubs and institutes and large centers that could be hundreds of millions of dollars over 10 years. So, now you’ve got 10 to 20 faculty that are across multiple universities. You have industry partners you’re required to bring in. You have national labs — so, government agencies on that side that also collaborate with you. You have to have a plan for workforce development. You have to have a translation plan. How are you going to get your technology out to the field?

(13:49)
You need a full-time director for this institute or hub. You need a deputy. You probably need a program manager and a finance person. So, you’re basically creating a new department — just you, whoever’s leading that effort. Then the really complex part is that the agencies now often require institutional commitments, is what they call it. So, in my starting example, the commitment I mentioned is just, I have a lab, and they commit to that they won’t kick me out of it. But with the complex ones, now they want, if it’s a $100 million grant, you maybe have to provide $100 million of matching in some way. So, that’s maybe faculty salary committed, that is GRAs, the graduate research assistants. So, Ph.D. student funding that the campus decides they will pay for. That is FTEs [full-time equivalents] to do a lot — like, maybe you can’t fund the program manager on the project, so we have to do that.

(14:46)
F&A, the facilities and administration, administrative cost, F&A, or that’s the indirect cost recovery that we have, maybe we have to return some of that.

Taylor Pardue (14:55):

OK.

Krista Walton (14:55):

So, I mean, it’s a huge undertaking. And so, now, instead of just me writing a proposal and submitting it through my sponsored program office, now, you’ve got layers and layers of people that have to be involved. We have to track these commitments and the reporting and the other institutions as well, because everybody has to match up. So, it’s just way more complicated in every way. And so, if you are the faculty member looking at that and you think, “I don’t want to lead that. I could write five or six smaller versions of this instead of that.” So, I think when I say I want to make research easier, it touches a lot of things, but I’m really thinking a lot about having the framework so that it’s not hard for a faculty member to tackle these, because you always need to start with a person decides they want to do this, then they need help.

(15:46)
And so, we’ve done a great job of that, but it’s one thing to be able to manage one or two of those a year, but if it’s moving towards 10 or 20?

Taylor Pardue (15:54):

Yeah.

Krista Walton (15:54):

So, that’s where I think my office can really make a difference here and have teams set up that know how these work and they’re on the lookout for them. They know when the calls come out and really just help position us to be as competitive as possible.

Taylor Pardue (16:10):

Absolutely.

Krista Walton (16:10):

That was a long answer, but it’s a complicated subject.

Taylor Pardue (16:14):

Well, it’s a perfect answer, yeah, to show the complexity and everything and to do it in such a succinct way. So, no, I thought that was great.

Krista Walton (16:20):

OK.

Taylor Pardue (16:21):

So, talking about that — what this process looks like, what this looks like for the university — kind of give a snapshot of where research and innovation is right now and where you’re heading towards as you go in, like you said, starting this second year of your role.

Krista Walton (16:33):

Yeah. So, we finished FY25 — so, that’s the most recent expenditure data that we have; we haven’t finished with ’26 yet, since it just completed a couple months ago — but FY25, we finished the year at around $765 million for research expenditures. That’s a record. So, we continue to go up and up over time. I was talking to some others recently about this and the trends. And so, if you look at us nationally, we are in the top six in the country for research expenditures. When I look at our number, at $765 million, it’s great, but I keep talking about this push towards $1 billion, which I think we probably can get close to by 2030, but it’s not so much trying to achieve this as a vanity metric. It’s really a capacity indicator. And if we’re in the top six, if you look at the top four above us, they’re already at $1 billion right now.

(17:32)
So, it’s kind of that we have to, on the one hand, sort of keep pace, but I think that we need to have some accelerated growth as well because some of our peers, everybody’s growing. So, it’s good news that we’re growing, but everyone is also.

Taylor Pardue (17:49):

Absolutely.

Krista Walton (17:50):

So, then you think, okay, well, some are growing at a faster rate than us. So, I’ve spent the first year really trying to diagnose how we can modernize some of our research administration across campus, along with other things. But I’m really excited into this next year to really thinking more about strategy, working with the provost and the deans, because, especially the deans, I mean, that’s where everything’s happening is in the colleges. And so, we really need to be good partners, because I need to know what they need to help us grow in the way that I think that we can. So, I think that that growth looks like setting up our Defense and Security Institute. So, that’s a new capability-builder. So, we need multipliers that can come in and not just hoping everything’s going to keep increasing, because our faculty number, that’s one way.

(18:43)
We’re going to have more faculty, they do more research, our numbers will grow, but we need to be growing more than just that number. And so, I think looking at ways to expand our portfolio. So, with Defense and Security, that is an area that we already have a lot of core expertise. And so, from an organizational standpoint, I’ve been trying to help us be better positioned to take advantage of new things as they happen. And so, we recently had a signing ceremony with, some folks from Fort Bragg came up with the chancellor, and that was really to celebrate a new, you could think of it as a master agreement between NC State and the U.S. Army. And so, when you have a master agreement, that means that, now … So, if you don’t have it, and I want to work with the Army, then we have to do a contract, and that has to go through the full, sponsored program process.

(19:39)
If you also want to work with the Army, you can’t use my contract. You have to do yours all over again. So, each time you have to renegotiate and do brand-new ones like it’s the first time.

Taylor Pardue (19:48):

Even though I’m in the same university?

Krista Walton (19:50):

Yes. So, a master agreement sets an overall framework so that, now, when you have a project, you can just call it a task order and you say, “Oh, I want to add this task order onto this agreement.” So, it’s very fast. It lets us turn things around quickly, which is important for the Army and our military partners. And so, when we talk about multiplier effects, that’s the kind of thing that I mean, is that that lowers the barrier to work with us. So, when we can talk to our partners and say, “Listen, these are things that we can do both with the partnership’s office, which is not under me, but we work closely together.” I think that trying to find ways that not only for the campus to do research, make it as easy as possible for them, but also make it as easy as possible for people to work with us.

Taylor Pardue (20:38):

Yeah.

Krista Walton (20:39):

I think that that’s where you can get accelerated growth — not just growth, but accelerated growth, because this capability didn’t exist before. So, that’s something that I really care a lot about, and it’s really in the nuts and bolts of things, but it’s how we can get things done faster. And once you get it and it’s working, then it’s already happening that we have other agencies reaching out saying, “Oh, we saw you did this. We saw the news about this agreement you just signed. Maybe we could do that.” We’re like, “Yeah, we can do it.” I think it’s to be determined right now what that’s going to look like in a year, but NC State is in a position to take big swings. We don’t need to just keep our head down and do the same things we’ve been doing. We could do that, and we would still be successful, but we are a place with huge growth potential, and we need to be taking big swings. We’re in the position to do that.

Taylor Pardue (21:30):

I think that’s perfect. Yeah, I think that really fits our ethos of, we always say, “Think and Do,” but we are not content by any stretch to “just” Think and Do.

Krista Walton (21:38):

That’s right.

Taylor Pardue (21:38):

We want to Think and Do more.

Krista Walton (21:39):

Yep.

Taylor Pardue (21:39):

And I think your office is just paramount to that, so. Obviously, we’ve talked a lot about federal funding, partnerships at that level, that kind of thing. What can listeners of this podcast, more of the individual donors, how can they help your office and just NC State’s overall success?

Krista Walton (21:56):

One thing that I’m really passionate about when it comes to a research mission is the doctoral education component of it. The Ph.D. students, especially, because you can plot these numbers, and I have, to look at how the doctoral degrees that we produce, how that is correlated with research expenditures, how that correlates with license agreements on the commercialization side, how it correlates with invention disclosures, startups launched. The doctoral students, they are the engine for all of these outcomes that we’re producing, the outcomes that we love to talk about, that we’ve already talked about some today. The things that we like to write stories on, that we’re No. 1 in the country in license agreements, where we’re in the top 10 in the country for startups launched. Those are things we talk about, but we don’t talk about what’s actually driving it all. And so, if you think about the input of the research mission is sort of faculty writing proposals or teams coming together. You have the infrastructure and the facilities. You have institutional support, all of those things, but the actual engine, the people doing the work, that is the Ph.D. students and postdocs, and they’re the ones in the lab, they’re doing the experiments, or they are writing the computer code or doing the analysis.

(23:20)
They are carrying out whatever crazy idea that faculty member came up with that got funded, and then you hand it to this person, you’re like, “Here’s a rough plan.” And so, along the way, them sort of getting the Ph.D., the whole point is that they are creating new knowledge. And I just always keep going back to that because we talk a lot about workforce development at a university, and that is a crucial component of what we do as a campus, any campus. But in addition to workforce development is the knowledge creation. We’re not just training people how to have good jobs. I’m not saying that’s not important, but if we’re looking at the research side of it, the doctoral students, the Ph.D. students, while they’re learning to be scientists or engineers or scholars, they are creating their own new thing that nobody did before.

Taylor Pardue (24:09):

Yeah.

Krista Walton (24:09):

So, they are answering the questions that we don’t have answers to yet and developing new frontiers. And so, I think that the way we fund our doctoral programs, I think, is a real opportunity for some engagement with funding that could help the early stage, especially. It can help support through things like topping awards, which can help us recruit the best and brightest Ph.D. students, and they want to come here. Ph.D. students sort of famously make pretty low, right? They’re getting stipends, and they’re getting their tuition covered — which they’re making way more than I made in 2000 as a Ph.D. student — but what kind of ways can we think of to better support that population of our campus? Because they are the engine, they are the innovation engine for NC State. I think whether it’s something that could support a first-year student while they’re ramping up into things, it can provide some flexibility to work on new ideas that are not able to be funded yet.

(25:10)
I really think of philanthropy as a resource that is not trying to duplicate anything that federal funding would be doing. It really would be helping in the sort of fundamental discovery phase. And so, that’s where I think, if I’m thinking about how I might support that, if I’m in that position, it’s really thinking about what problems do you care about that you wish that we had solutions to that you personally care about? So, not like a menu of things. We do everything at NC State, and that’s great. And so, I think something that really connects kind of deeply personal interests to the people at NC State that are trying to make real progress. And I mean, it might be caring about a specific disease or a community or food security, national security, the environment, entrepreneurship or just the economy. There are so many things that could use that kind of support, and it could really change the trajectory.

(26:11)
Again, it’s another multiplier, right? And it’s something that can really help us do creative, outside-the-box things that maybe you can’t get funding for yet.

Taylor Pardue (26:21):

I think that is great. It just goes to show there’s a place for everyone at NC State, but there’s also a way to support NC State for everyone. So, I think that’s just a great way of summarizing that. Well, now that you’ve been here a little over a year and everything, you’ve really got to see a lot on campus. What are some examples of some of these grad students, Ph.D. students that have really stuck out to you in your time already?

Krista Walton (26:42):

Yeah, that’s an awesome question. I’ve got a few examples I can think of, but there are so many, so I’m definitely leaving out a lot of interesting stories.

Taylor Pardue (26:50):

I feel like that’s the trend with your entire office. There’s so much we could share, and it’s just, you know, more episodes to come, is the way I look at it.

Krista Walton (26:57):

Absolutely. We can just have a series.

Taylor Pardue (26:59):

Love it.

Krista Walton (27:01):

Because, yeah, I love this stuff, and so I can talk about it forever. But I do want to highlight a couple of things. There’s one really interesting project that was a recent Ph.D. graduate, I believe out of chemical engineering, but also working with plant sciences, that this person developed low-cost sensors that can detect plant disease before symptoms are visible.

Taylor Pardue (27:25):

Oh, wow.

Krista Walton (27:25):

And so, that, again, really grew out of NC State’s Plant Sciences Initiative, or PSI. And so, they spun this out into a startup company. I think it’s called Verdia Diagnostics. And so, the Ph.D. student was a co-founder and I think is maybe the CEO. So, they’re already pilot-testing this technology in commercial greenhouses around North Carolina. And so, I think that’s such a good example of something that was Ph.D. research, is where it started, and then moved into startup and really going to move into real-world deployment.

(27:58)
There’s also one, I think from Textiles, that’s really sort of around the topic of water pollution. So, the Ph.D. student developed a patent-pending, floating textile sort of bio-scaffold. And so, this bio-scaffold that floats in the water can remove nitrogen, phosphorus and other pollutants from our waterways. Yeah, very cool.

Taylor Pardue (28:21):

Things I didn’t even know were even theoretically possible, much less already in development.

Krista Walton (28:27):

And so, then there’s technology that can turn the harvested material into fertilizer. And so, that startup I think is called something like Ceretune. I’m not sure I’m pronouncing these properly, but again, this is just starting out with faculty that got funding and then they bring a student in, but then the student brings their own knowledge and interpretation and discovery to it. So, I think that’s also a really great example of research moving to intellectual property and then using that as a jumping-off point to create a company. So, much of all of this really goes hand in hand, and we don’t think that every research project should turn into a company, but given our size and our scale and just the types of work we do, we expect some will. And so, I think those are just a couple of examples, but there are many, many more.

(29:16)
We can maybe do another episode just about that.

Taylor Pardue (29:17):

Absolutely. Well, like I said at the beginning, just a great example of how a land-grant university like ours really benefits lives and tangible results that go out beyond just campus. So, it’s not just on campus, for campus; it’s for everyone.

Krista Walton (29:32):

Absolutely.

Taylor Pardue (29:32):

Love that work.

Krista Walton (29:33):

Yeah, absolutely.

Taylor Pardue (29:34):

So, we’ve mentioned about the future, what your office, what the university, the days to come look like. How is AI, especially, impacting your office and impacting the university?

Krista Walton (29:45):

Yeah. AI is really changing how we can do research, how quickly we can do it, the kinds of questions we can ask. It is really going to be infusing everything, I think. I was having a conversation about this recently where I was sort of equating it to when the internet first came out and you’re just like, “What are we going to do with the internet?” And it’s like, “Well, everything.”

Taylor Pardue (30:07):

What can’t you do with the internet? Yeah.

Krista Walton (30:09):

What can’t you do? So, I think AI is going to follow this same path, and it’s a tool, and it’s really figuring out how to best leverage it. And so, I think some good illustrations of this, because we have so much expertise at NC State, and I don’t know if you heard about the Department of Energy Genesis Mission. The awards were just made a few months ago, but that program, the U.S. Department of Energy really created the Genesis Mission to be Apollo-like in scale.

(30:40)
So, they talk about it like the next Apollo. And what they mean by that is that, if we think about AI, the origin of AI as a large language model, where you’re just using lots of data and it’s interpolating and making predictions based on existing data or information, that’s just the first level. So, at this point, we’re much more sophisticated than that. So, the idea is that we have decades of data that the government has funded research across the country, decades and decades. And what if we’re able to now leverage AI, self-driving labs, autonomous labs, all of these new capabilities to harness this nationwide data that we have? And I’m being generic on purpose because that could be for making new batteries, it could be for critical minerals. I mean, it touches, pick your favorite topic. So, the idea behind Genesis is providing early funding.

(31:43)
They’re talking about them in phases, where phase one is supposed to be very fast-paced, and it’s sort of the proof of your concept that you’ve proposed. And then if you’re successful, you get to get into the phase two, and that’s, like, larger funding. So, this funding program is for universities, national labs, industry, anyone that’s working in this space. And so, the awards that were announced a few months ago, NC State is leading three of these. And that’s a big deal because, I think, in total there were maybe 268 projects funded, and 170-something of those are being led by universities. So, a lot of universities got one or two. There were seven universities that had more than three, but our number really puts us in the, maybe, top 15, top 18 in the country. The thing that I’m really excited about it is just how different …

(32:43)
So, it’s not like, “Oh, we do AI in this one thing.” These three projects could not be more different from each other. So, one is basically trying to study how stars form. I’m not an astrophysicist, so I won’t try to get deeper into that. Another one is looking at the trustworthiness of AI. So, if we’re using AI to ask research questions and help guide the way we do experiments, we gotta make sure that we can believe what it’s saying and that it can’t be influenced by villainous forces or outside hacking and that sort of thing. And so, really, it’s about the safety and the security of AI. And so, I mean that’s completely different from the star one. So, I mean, we really cover the gamut of things. The third one, I think, is more hardware-focused and how do we make sure that we’re building things that can actually keep up with what we’re doing?

(33:37)
So, I mean, these seem completely unrelated because they are. And so, I think that’s such a perfect illustration of, I keep saying “breadth,” but we cover so much ground on this campus because we have so many experts in such a variety of specialty areas. And so, I think that’s a really good example, and it just shows that we are at the forefront of AI for applications and AI for research.

Taylor Pardue (34:02):

I think that’s just, again, a wonderful example of how we do things at NC State differently and do them better. So many times, people think of AI and they think of so people can do less or losing jobs and things like that. Again, we are wanting to think and do more, faster, better. It’s a tool that we’re going to use to impact even more of the world. So, I love that.

Krista Walton (34:23):

Yes, absolutely. And I think even in addition to doing things faster, I think because you can get to answers faster, it lets us ask questions that we maybe can’t even ask right now because we can get to different solutions more quickly. And so, that’s where I think it’s really exciting. And I know there’s a lot of conversation around AI and what it’s going to replace, but I think it’s really difficult to replace human discernment and understanding societal context and ethical implications of things. And so, I mean, yeah, that’s another podcast episode, I suppose, but we’re doing really exciting things here. And so, I’m looking forward to seeing how those projects progress over the next few months.

Taylor Pardue (35:09):

I’ve mentioned it several times. I just love how the university really makes an impact and how it gets the message out, gets the products out, gets the research out and the knowledge out, and how people see a real-world benefit to NC State. Talk a little bit about, you have a website, or a subset of one website, called Research Works and how the public and, everyone, how that plays into your overall office’s role.

Krista Walton (35:30):

Yes. So, this is something that we actually just rolled out in the last few months that we started working on when I arrived because I felt like we were missing a place that people could learn about what is research? What is it? Why does the university have it? Why does it matter to me out in the public? So, I felt like we were really missing a public-facing storytelling that could show why it’s important that we’re not just doing research and keeping it here and publishing papers. We are doing that, but that this is actually having an impact. And so, our Research Works website, the idea is that, it is research “works” for lots of things. So, it’s research works for the frontline, for industry, for the environment, for families, for the economy, for teachers and students and for farmers. And so, you can go there and sort of see little stories and videos and vignettes about how the research that’s happening at NC State, how it is directly benefiting all of these different demographics and stakeholders in our community.

(36:34)
And so, I think that’s, first of all, it was a really fun thing to pull together because our impact is so big and to see it all in these different spaces and put it together in the categories. But I think that we need to do a better job at communicating the value and that this is having an impact beyond education, which is an important impact, but it’s beyond what’s happening on campus. And so, again, that ties back, I think, to our land-grant mission as well. And so, yeah, check out the website and let us know if you have some new ideas for research we could do to impact any of those areas.

Taylor Pardue (37:12):

Yeah, we will definitely be sure to include a link in the show notes to that, as well as your overall website as well.

Krista Walton (37:17):

Wonderful. Thanks so much.

Taylor Pardue (37:19):

Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for just coming out today. We’re really excited about having you in this role and so glad that you’re at NC State now.

Krista Walton (37:25):

Well, thank you for having me, and I’m happy to come back anytime. Thanks.

Taylor Pardue (37:34):

To learn more about the Office of Research and Innovation and how you can help further its work, please visit research.ncsu.edu as well as research.ncsu.edu/research-work. If you’d like to hear even more stories of Wolfpack success, please subscribe to the NC State Philanthropy Podcast today via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or Podbean. Be sure to leave a comment and rating as well to let us know how we’re doing. Thanks for listening, and as always, go Pack.