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YEREVAN, Armenia — In 2024, the American University of Armenia (AUA) released its latest 10-year Strategic Plan, focused on positioning the University as a leading academic institution in Armenia. Among the Plan’s seven institutional priorities is the expansion of AUA’s research portfolio, which the University hopes to stimulate through sustained efforts to attract experienced scholars and research-oriented faculty. These activities are part of the academic initiatives carried out by the University under the oversight of the Office of the Provost.
We sat down with AUA President Dr. Bruce Boghosian to learn more about AUA’s priority research areas, the steps it has taken thus far to support faculty and student research, and its long-term vision for research output and impact.
What are priority research areas into which AUA wishes to expand?
The different colleges are each focused on a number of highly relevant research areas. For example, the Turpanjian College of Health Sciences is currently conducting a study of social determinants of non-communicable diseases. It is also assessing the relationship between public health and public policy, looking at universal health coverage, mental health, tobacco control, healthy lifestyles — all in the Armenian context.
The Zaven P. and Sonia Akian College of Science and Engineering is studying the optimization of transportation systems, intelligent traffic management, and the future of roads with autonomous vehicles. The College is also tackling interdisciplinary subjects, such as digital humanities, which connects science and engineering with literature, digital governance, which links areas of science and engineering to public policy and administration, and automation and robotics for improving productivity. The Internet of Things, the future of 3D printing, digital twinning, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) are significant areas of focus, and we expect research on the latter two to grow substantially with the upcoming introduction of the supercomputers from NVIDIA and Firebird.
The political science program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences is focused on the future of international relations and diplomacy, an especially pertinent topic as we train the next generation of Armenia’s diplomats. Because we find ourselves in a geopolitically fraught region, there is much work to be done on security issues, in the same way that think tanks research this subject in other countries. The College also aims to address issues related to regional, Eurasian, and European politics, as well as diasporas and how they relate to states.
Some of our centers, such as the Acopian Center for the Environment, are also highly engaged in critical research areas. The AUA Acopian Center is currently researching clean energy, water resource management, biodiversity, circular economies, sustainable energy, and deforestation, as well as environmental education, in order to train Armenia’s youth to become good stewards of the country’s unique environmental reserves.
What are AUA’s long-term goals for research output and impact?
First, we aim to keep what is working well, sustaining the level and quality of research we have now, while also improving it, both in terms of quality and quantity. Quantity is measured, for example, by the volume of peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals and the recognition of that research output by other institutions worldwide, as reflected in the number of citations or invitations to collaborate. Quality of research could, inter alia, involve high-level projects, including cooperating with the Armenian government: AUA would like to become the primary center for international relations in Armenia, and perhaps even the region. To achieve this, we would benefit from increased collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of High-Tech Industry, and others.
The University seeks to expand the amount of external grant funding, both in terms of submissions and awards. We want to change the nature of the work we do, moving away from work-for-hire and short-term research projects. These were important in the University’s early days, but now we need to look to larger and longer-term research projects, where we drive their motivation and conduct them in partnership with other universities.
We also aim to develop more collaborative and interdisciplinary projects within the University. One of AUA’s advantages is its relatively small colleges, which create fewer barriers for interdisciplinary cooperation. We can leverage this feature into interdisciplinary projects, where, by integrating expertise from different fields, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
How do you see AUA’s research mission evolving over the next 5-10 years?
Some of the tectonic shifts that AUA aims to undertake during this period include expanding our partnerships with universities, granting agencies, and governments around the world, especially in the European Union (EU), but also in the Arabian Peninsula and in East Asia, in addition to our work in the United States. We have relied heavily on U.S. partnerships and funding for many years, and while this has been a wonderful and mutually beneficial partnership, we are now joining a number of universities that are broadening their networks and connecting with counterparts in other parts of the world.
Our aim is for the research conducted in all our colleges to move toward greater sustainability, scale, and impact, which aligns with what I mentioned earlier, regarding moving away from work-for-hire and instead driving larger-scale projects. We also want to develop an internal workload model in the short term that rewards research-active faculty for their output, perhaps by offering them lower teaching loads and more teaching-release opportunities. As I noted earlier, we want to concentrate on regional and societal needs, ensuring that our research contributes to Armenia’s needs, while also aligning with international priorities and standards. In this way, we hope to connect Armenia with the global value chain and the global supply chain of ideas.
I was a faculty member at Tufts University when it transitioned from a teaching university into what has become an R1 institution, so I observed the way the administration there approached this shift, which can sometimes be a difficult change to navigate. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here: there are best practices for handling this transition, and there are many lessons we can apply to the AUA context, in order to eventually become known as a center for research that is recognized as such by international standards.
What specific steps has AUA taken recently to support faculty and student research?
AUA has a research incentives program, which we hope to grow in the coming years, that supplies faculty with the resources — time, teaching releases, and so on — necessary to support their work. We also allow faculty to buy out of teaching time if they receive grants that allow them to do so. We are hiring new personnel — sometimes including researchers and students — to help with research activities. All of our new full-time hires now come with their own research portfolio. As I mentioned earlier, we are networking and developing partnerships with international partners, especially research-active universities, that will help our faculty expand their research capacity.
We are also working on providing incentives, such as poster session contests, to both undergraduate and graduate students to participate in research. In addition, we offer support for conference attendance, when faculty members are invited to deliver a lecture or referee presentation, and the purchase of equipment, whenever possible. Sometimes, early-career researchers need an extra impetus to dive into independent research, as it can be difficult to make the transition from supervised research, and we hope that these incentives and support structures facilitate this shift.
Has there been an increase in research funding? How is it being utilized?
Research funding is being used to buy out teaching time, hire new personnel, provide community outreach services, network and establish collaborative projects with international partners, support conference attendance, purchase equipment in the sciences, and help faculty apply for grants. In fact, we recently launched the Office of Sponsored Programs and Technology Transfer, which will assist faculty in protecting their intellectual property going forward.
While we have had some recent successes with grant funding applications, such as our two EU Horizon grants, we have, at the same time, been hit with some loss of funding that had been coming to us from USAID and elsewhere in the U.S.. government. All in all, we maintain a healthy and robust portfolio of sponsored research, and we hope to further expand it in the coming years.
How is AUA ensuring its research addresses regional or national issues?
AUA has established local and international partnerships with industry, government, and academia in order to align our research with regional and national priorities. We also hold events, roundtable discussions, talks, and conferences to attract people to the University. Sometimes, we publish our conference proceedings online, a tradition which we would like to boost by building up the AUA Press so that it can start prioritizing the publication of some of the exciting research being carried out at AUA.
We are working on identifying industry partners that are especially interested in contributing to the AI supercomputers — among the biggest in the world, in fact — that will be coming to Armenia soon. We are isolating research themes that are connected to societal, environmental, economic, and defense challenges for Armenia and the broader region. The University’s goal is to contribute directly to the expansion of its economy and the defense of the country, as well as to benefit all aspects of Armenian art and culture that are both unique and important to us as a nation.
What role does international collaboration play in AUA’s research strategy?
For several years, AUA has had fruitful collaborations with Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, Emory University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and, more recently, Washington State University. Now, we are trying to establish memoranda of understanding with institutions in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula, and Asia. International collaboration is critical, as it expands the scope, quality, and impact of our research and facilitates the exchange of knowledge, allowing us to develop new skills and engage in cutting-edge research.
AUA is the only university in the region with two highly competitive and prestigious Horizon European grants issued by the EU — the Center for Ethics in Public Affairs (ETICA) and Strengthening Research in Armenia for Energy Transition toward Climate Solutions (STREACS).
We are also working on developing international partnerships that allow us to exchange students. Currently, 10% of AUA’s student body hails from outside Armenia, with most from the diaspora. We would like to bring that figure closer to 20%, with more non-ethnically-Armenian students in the mix to introduce different traditions of education and broaden Armenian students’ view of higher education.
How are students (both undergraduate and graduate) involved in research at AUA?
Students are often brought in to work on research projects under supervision, whether for research internships, for hire, or for their theses and capstone projects. Sometimes, students will come on as research assistants, and at other times, as interns or as part of practica associated with their degree. These experiences offer them a valuable glimpse of what it’s like to work in a research program at a university.
At the graduate level, students are often directly involved in research as part of their master’s degrees. In the future, we hope to add Ph.D. programs, which will be a crucial step for expanding research activity at AUA. Bringing in Ph.D. students — who focus full-time on research and can be trusted with high-level work — significantly transforms the research culture of an institution.
How does AUA recognize and reward faculty research accomplishments?
This is an area the University is actively striving to enhance. Making faculty promotions contingent on research output, quality, and external recognition is one way we aim to reward faculty research accomplishments. We sometimes present awards to faculty whose papers are accepted at a high-quality conference or whose work is published in a prestigious journal. Since we plan to factor research quality into merit raises, we endeavor to reward faculty who conduct excellent research in their performance evaluations.
As I mentioned earlier, we offer teaching release time for faculty who have demonstrated records of research productivity. Sometimes, we help faculty publish their work and increase its visibility. Finally, we feature high-impact research through posts on our social media and articles on our Newsroom website.
Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.