Desert Research Institute under threat

Dr. Kumud Acharya is a busy man, and he expects to stay that way.

The scientist from the Nevada-based Desert Research Institute is on the front lines of a war against a fast-spreading mussel that has invaded Lake Mead and the Colorado River.

At DRI’s labs on Flamingo Road near UNLV, Acharya and his research team are growing tanks full of the little mollusks so they can try out new ways to kill them.

He has three separate quagga mussel studies now under way, with a fourth waiting in the wings for funding.

All told, Acharya has his hand in a dozen DRI research projects on a range of environmental issues playing out from here to China.

He loves his work, and he loves doing it at a research institute that encourages him to approach science as a problem-solver and an entrepreneur.

It’s too bad he might not be able to stay.

TURNING ONE DOLLAR INTO FIVE

Desert Research Institute sprouted during the Cold War and slowly grew into a leader in the study of global warming.

But DRI’s biggest claim to fame, especially in a budget year like this one, might just be its ability to turn every dollar it gets from the state into five dollars in outside funding.

This fiscal year, the institute has transformed about $8.2 million of state money into $45.5 million in grants, contracts and other revenue.

In the process, the independent research arm of the state’s higher education system has employed some 500 scientists, engineers and technicians and covered 80 percent of its payroll with outside funds.

"So that’s not too bad," deadpans Dr. Stephen Wells, DRI’s president since 1999.

Still, the institute’s ability to make money might not protect it from lawmakers and education officials looking to cut hundreds of millions in state spending over the next two years.

DRI is bracing for a $2 million reduction from the $8.2 million it currently receives from the state. That’s on top of the $1.2 million hit it has taken since 2008.

Far more alarming, Wells says, is the prospect of DRI being absorbed by one of the state’s two universities.

If that happens, a number of the institute’s most prominent researchers, Acharya among them, have promised to leave.

The difference is DRI itself.

While the institute is part of Nevada’s higher education system, it is separate from the universities. It doesn’t offer tenure or state-funded salaries to its faculty. Instead, researchers are lured with project startup packages, which they then use to secure grants and contracts to pay for their work.

Says Jenny Chapman, a faculty member at DRI: "We’re lean and mean and hungry, and we’re actively out looking to bring that research money back."

Wells says many staff members are at the institute specifically because they want to work outside the typical university structure.

Acharya puts it more bluntly: If DRI is absorbed by UNLV or UNR, "I will not be a tenured faculty, so that means I will be a second-class citizen."

Rather than put himself through that here, he would take a job at a much more prestigious university. As far as he’s concerned, "UNLV is not even in the second tier."

Already the institute has lost more than 20 faculty members over the past 2½ years. Wells says some were "cherry picked" by out-of-state universities and institutes touting a more stable working environment.

And the exodus is rooted in something deeper than mere uncertainty about DRI. Wells says some departing faculty members have expressed concerns about an overall lack of commitment to education in Nevada and what that might mean for the future of the state as a whole.

"It’s been like a plague that has spread through the faculty of higher education," says Wells, who joined DRI in 1995 after more than 20 years as a university professor in California and New Mexico. "I’ve never seen anything this serious in any academic position I’ve held. It’s hitting the core missions of all institutions."

SMALL BEGINNINGS, BIG IMPACTS

DRI began in 1959 as a division of the University of Nevada in Reno, designed to bolster research and development in the state.

Ten years later, it was spun off as a separate entity tasked as an "entrepreneurial academic unit."

In the decades since, DRI has performed research in all 50 states and on every continent.

Closer to home, the institute is leading research on a wide range of topics from endangered fish in tiny desert spring pools to that plague of mussels spreading unchecked through Lake Mead, from water quality in Lake Tahoe to water scarcity in Southern Nevada.

On the latest list put out by the National Science Foundation, DRI ranked 20th in the nation in money spent on environmental science research, higher than both Harvard and Stanford.

Work by staff at the institute has resulted in more than 30 patents and four recent startup companies.

Officials acknowledge that even with the proposed cut in funding, DRI will still receive more state money than it did during fiscal year 2005. But less money from the state means less money to leverage into more money, Wells says.

He and others question the wisdom of making any significant cuts to an institution that creates jobs, attracts highly skilled professionals and generates revenue.

"I think we’re doing what the state asked us to do 52 years ago," Wells says. "All of that depends on us bringing in that talent. All of that is at risk."

PROFITABLE TIES TO THE TEST SITE

Among DRI’s most dependable revenue sources is the Nevada National Security Site, the 1,360-square-mile federal reservation 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The institute has worked closely with the test site for decades, "pretty much since DRI came into being," says Chapman, who now manages that program.

Under its current contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, DRI faculty members provide research and expertise on a wide range of subjects throughout what used to be known as the Nevada Test Site.

Their work includes everything from monitoring reseeding activities at Yucca Mountain and other areas disturbed by construction to tracking groundwater contamination from underground nuclear blasts.

When the first trace amounts of radiation from Japan’s nuclear crisis arrived in Nevada, it was a DRI community monitoring station that detected them.

When energy officials wanted to build something new at the test site, they started by calling in DRI to survey the area for Indian artifacts and other cultural resources.

"We have a cadre of archaeologists," Chapman says. "It’s part of the stewardship of the Nevada Test Site."

About 50 faculty members participate in the contract with the Energy Department, though not on a full-time basis. Some work at the test site is classified, so access is restricted in parts of DRI offices in Las Vegas and Reno.

"We highly value what we do, and we feel like we make a contribution," Chapman says.

The five-year contract, set to expire in August, has been worth about $42 million, nearly as much as the institute received in state funding over the same period.

Chapman, a 23-year DRI employee, says negotiations to renew the Department of Energy contract are moving forward despite the ongoing budget fight in Carson City.

INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION

With an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and a doctorate in biology, Acharya considers himself an "ecological engineer."

He was drawn to DRI six years ago by its strong, international reputation for environmental science and its commitment to the sort of work he favors.

"DRI does applied research, you know," he says. "It provides a wonderful opportunity for me to sell my talents."

Acharya likes the speed at which the institute operates, how he can have a proposal approved and submitted in a day that might take several weeks in a traditional university setting.

Last year alone, he and his team published seven peer-reviewed articles and submitted 10 more for review. And with the money his projects have brought in, Acharya directly employs 14 people in three different labs.

He has been involved in the quagga problem since the very first meeting held after the mussels were discovered in Lake Mead in 2007.

"I knew right away this is a huge problem. It’s a problem that requires continuous fighting," he says.

Acharya also is involved in separate studies on the potential flooding impacts of climate change and on algae used in the production of biofuels.

Lately, he has been spending time in China, where he has four water-related research projects under way, including a Japanese-funded effort focused on tamarisk, also known as salt cedar.

The plants are considered a water-grubbing pest in the American Southwest, particularly along the Colorado River, but China wants more of them because they help control soil erosion.

"We’re trying to determine why they do so well here and not as well in China," he explains. "We wish we could ship them ours."

Acharya says the proposed cut to DRI’s comparatively modest state funding could hurt the institute’s overall efficiency, but it "wouldn’t affect a dime" of his projects.

Consolidation is another matter.

Ultimately, Acharya says he wants "to be here as long as DRI is here." But if he’s forced to leave, he will take some of his projects, and their funding, right along with him.

The research will still get done, he says, but "the money won’t stay in Nevada."

NEVADA NEEDS TO INVEST IN ITSELF

DRI president Wells doesn’t envy state lawmakers and the governor for the choices they have to make, but he hopes the current budget crisis will lead to a serious examination of Nevada’s priorities for the future.

"Quite frankly, I think the state needs to sit back and look at its business model," he says. "If we want to ever be more than a state where people come to visit and we live off them, we have to invest in ourselves."

Faculty member Chapman couldn’t agree more.

She has a daughter at UNLV and a son at a local high school. To her, the debate over state education funding extends well beyond what might happen to the Desert Research Institute.

"It’s pretty scary times," she says. "We’re all in this together as far as I’m concerned."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.