Title: Why Research Matters at Georgetown

Research is a core part of Georgetown.

Georgetown researchers have made significant contributions to every academic field over the university’s long history, from the creation of a life-saving vaccine to the discovery of a new cosmic substance.

Today, researchers at Georgetown push the boundaries in fields such as biomedical technology and microplastics while generating new insights in disciplines like business, international relations and the humanities.

In February, Georgetown was designated as an R1 institution by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education for the 30th year in a row. The designation is awarded to the top U.S. research universities with “very high research activity.”

For Jeff Urbach, a physicist and the vice provost for research, research is an indispensable part of Georgetown that enables the university to live out its Catholic and Jesuit mission.

“It’s at the heart of what our faculty does. I think all our faculty would say that their research program is in part how they stay vital as scholars,” Urbach said. “We are also a Jesuit university, men and women for others. Social impact is a big part of what we do, translating that fundamental research to social impact.”

As a new school year begins, we sat down with Urbach and Anna Tate Riegel, vice president for research at the Georgetown University Medical Center and vice dean of Biomedical Graduate Education, to talk about the importance of research, of training the next generation, and what sets Georgetown apart from other research universities.

Research at Georgetown University

What is the role of research at a university like Georgetown?

Urbach: It’s at the heart of what our faculty does that is essential for maintaining that level of deep inquiry. It’s important to have faculty who are engaged in scholarship and pushing the frontiers of knowledge.

But it’s much more than that as well. There’s the education part, training the next generation, whether they’re going to continue that research and be scholars themselves or go out into the wider world and use the skills that they’ve developed to do other things.

Riegel: I totally agree. You can’t do academics without research. You can do didactic learning, pick up a book, learn a bunch of facts, but then you have to have the inquiry aspect to push further and ask the questions about where this goes in the future. That’s what a research mindset is all about.

What are the unique contributions universities make to research compared to private industry?

Riegel: I’m not trying to say that industry doesn’t have academic inquiry because some of them do, but they’re not there to teach. They’re not there to provide the underpinnings of the real thought process and how to think about things. Our job as teachers and academics is to present what we think is factual, but also to present the methodology for how you should inquire and think about those as research questions for the future. That’s not the point of industry. It’s a different mindset.

Urbach: I like the phrase ‘mindset’ as a way of describing what’s at the core of the community of scholars that a university represents and the teaching aspect of it. Industry is about producing products. Pushing the frontiers of knowledge by itself is not the goal. That’s what we are about.

What role do undergraduate and graduate students play in research at Georgetown?

Urbach: What students bring is a new perspective. We’re lucky we get that new perspective every year. New students come in and are good at asking the ‘why’ question and challenging us. Research is a community process. You have contributions from folks who have been around for a while and know the accepted wisdom, all the way to people who are just learning it. Those interactions are a key part of moving research forward in many fields.

Riegel: I would answer that in two ways. I’ve been at other institutions like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a big university before that. I think the atmosphere here is very personal, interactive and collegial. It’s not always the case in all places where you do research.

The other is the perspective of how social justice and the ethical aspects are considered in research, which is part of the Jesuit mission. It’s not usual to have those coinciding with basic and translational science, but I think it’s important.

How do Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit values shape the research at the university?

Urbach: As a physical scientist, I would say it doesn’t shape the research being done, but shapes the way we do the research. The fact that one always needs to consider the ethical implications and the responsibility of scientists in the larger social context, and how the research interfaces with the world.

Riegel: The best example I can give you is the health disparities research we do. DC is a good example of where we have massive health disparities in terms of outcomes and access to care. What I’m impressed with is how Georgetown researchers and students see the value added of addressing these questions in the local context. It’s an important lesson for young people and older people like myself that you don’t live in a vacuum.

How does Georgetown leverage its reputation in international relations, business, public policy, the humanities and other fields to produce research?

Urbach: Interdisciplinary research is a big piece of what we do as a community, but I don’t want to undersell the importance of the individual scholar’s research. We have a long list of people who have contributed deep insights into the nuances of how governments interact and how governments and technology interact and that sort of thing. The School of Foreign Service’s strength is in part because it takes all of those different components and brings them together in one school. Many of the faculty there have joint appointments in government, economics and other departments.

Riegel: I talk mainly about the Medical Center, but I have to say that with the McCourt School of Public Policy now having Carol Roan Gresenz as dean with a health economics and health data analytics background, I think how we handle those data sets and what questions we ask broach on so many different parts of our university. That’s going to be an important area for Georgetown to crosstalk across all these different schools and campuses.

How does Georgetown’s Washington, DC, location set its research apart from other universities?

Urbach: One of the clearest examples is how there’s a porous border between the university and Washington, DC. We have a lot of faculty who will spend time in think tanks and government. There’s an intellectual exchange that works both ways in that the kinds of research questions that we ask in government and international relations fields are very much driven by the things that the policymakers are dealing with, and the work we do is able to directly inform the process because Washington is the center of so much of that. 

The other thing I want to mention is the Law Center. They’re at the heart of DC and the center of the Capitol Campus. Things like the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law are university-wide and allow us to leverage the Law Center’s location and connections to do more. It’s part of the real promise of the Capitol Campus.

Riegel: Just building on that, it’s terrific that we have the NIH just up the road. Many of us spent quite a bit of time at NIH before we came to Georgetown. It allows for a lot of collaborations and crosstalk. It’s an incredible resource to have. We have programs with the NIH where our students train there for a while and then come back to Georgetown, so you can build on the availability of strong federal resources. A lot of our master’s programs have internships at federal institutions in the area where they can get hands-on experience, so I think DC is hugely important to a lot of aspects of research and education.

What emerging areas of research are you excited for Georgetown to be a leader in?

Riegel: There is a lot of cool stuff going on in the cognitive sciences — new treatments for Parkinson’s, the understanding of brain function, et cetera. It’s incredible. The brain is still the best computer out there, and it’s still somewhat of a black box. In the cancer area, immune cell therapy, I think that whole area is intriguing and has given us some incredible benefits and results recently. Understanding the immune system has snowballed in the last five to 10 years, so there are some exciting areas of research there. 

Urbach: The list is long. I think the interface of AI and the new technologies, large data and what we can learn and do with that, both the potential for advancing impactful research and also the ethical and practical challenges. These are areas in which Georgetown is well-positioned to take a leading role. Another area that is growing for us is the Earth Commons, our environment and sustainability initiative. Peter Marra and his team have identified some areas where we have the potential to impact the conversation around the need to build a sustainable world. Technical solutions will come out of the engineering schools, but to really address the issues requires a multi-pronged approach, and Georgetown is well-positioned for that.