The goal of the ADVANCE Florida Network (AFN) is simple. The program is designed to encourage collaboration and the sharing of information and resources in the areas of recruitment, promotion, retention, and leadership for women.
Under the AFN, tenured and tenure-track STEM women faculty and STEM women postdoctoral fellows among the three urban public research universities that comprise the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities (Florida International University (FIU), University of Central Florida (UCF), and University of South Florida (USF)) can apply for funding to offer research seminars at either of their non-home institutions, with the goal of developing research collaborations and networks and increasing their professional visibility.
Priyanka Alluri can speak firsthand to the benefits of the program. An assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at FIU, she studies transportation safety, and her research has focused on a wide range of topics, including advanced safety analysis models, implementation of the Highway Safety Manual (HSM) and SafetyAnalyst, pedestrian and bicycle safety, safety design of traffic control devices, and human factors in transportation. “I’ll often get ideas while driving, about things like signal timing and pedestrian flow,” she says. “The applications are extremely practical.”
Alluri was part of the inaugural group of AFN awardees in 2017, after seeing an email blast asking for participants. She was looking for opportunities to broaden her network, and while it’s certainly possible for professors to independently visit other universities, AFN provided a welcome framework that made the trip much simpler to coordinate and much more productive.
She visited USF with Yu Zhang (an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering) as her host, a visit that opened avenues towards discussions about ongoing research projects, student recruitment, and collaborations. While there, she talked with many students and faculty she wouldn’t otherwise have had a chance to meet, and many of whom were curious about FIU. In addition to sowing the seeds of long-term relationships with others in her field, there were also immediate benefits. For example, Dr. Bertini, the director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at USF, suggested she increase her online presence so that others could see the impressive work she was doing, including grant-funded research.
Her interactions with the AFN did not end there. The next year, she played host herself to Tingting Zhao, a postdoctoral associate in civil and environmental engineering from USF who had reached out to her during her previous visit.
“There’s value in the AFN for both postdocs and for tenure-track professors,” she says. “For postdocs, the experience is almost like a mock interview – it’s a day long event where you give several talks, and it’s an invaluable experience. For tenure-track professors, the opportunity to find new mentors, to develop relationships with others is great. The chance to find mentors who are not affiliated with your school and so provide an outside, unfiltered perspective is very useful.”
She wholeheartedly recommends the AFN to others. “You get to meet so many people, and the synergy created by the program is dynamic. Every university is strong in certain aspects, and collaboration helps the bigger causes of knowledge and education.”
