MIT’s Grant and Contract Administration support function is organized to support research through one primary point of contact. Each department, laboratory or center at the Institute is assigned a Grant/Contract Administrator. This person could have the title of Assistant Contract Administrator (ACA), Contract Administrator (CA), a Senior CA, CA Manager or Assistant Director, Grant and Contract Administration, and is responsible for providing services to the department for the entire life-cycle of the project, including proposal review and submission, award negotiation and setup, award management, and award closeout.
The CA is supported by other experts such as OSATT Strategic Transaction Officers and subaward administrators. RAS also assigns an Agency Liaison for each major sponsor, who provides research support to MIT.
Agency Liaisons have specific skills and expertise in how the agency or sponsor conducts business, and are responsible for signing all transactions for that agency. There staff members who provide single point of contact and Liaison support for MIT.
The Post Award Operations (POPS) team handles most data entry into our grant and contract systems for all aspects of post award administration, for example, account set up and maintenance and feeds to SAP.
The Subawards team is charged with issuing subawards to other institutions under MIT’s sponsored agreements, managing all subaward reporting and compliance work, responding to audits, managing sub organizational risk and associated duties. MIT subcontracts out about 10% of the funds it receives on an annual basis.
MIT is home of Coeus, and its successor, the Kuali Coeus, a cradle-to-grave, enterprise wide grants management system. Coeus was developed by MIT in 1995. MIT deployed Kuali Coeus (KC) in 2015, as a result of the partnership between the Kuali Foundation and Coeus Consortium. It is based on the Coeus functionality developed at MIT. The VPR Systems team is responsible for developing and maintaining these systems and reporting in support of MIT’s research administration ecosystem.
The VPR Communications Team and RAS Office Administration team provides administrative and communications support for the office, and maintains the RAS websites.