Nicole Motzer, 12:15pm Tuesday, May 24th at Bozeman Masonic Hall

Dr. Nicole Motzer is the Director of the Office of Research Development at Montana State University. In this role,

Nicole Motzer

she works closely with PIs from across campus to elevate research capacities and accelerate research activity. She is particularly focused on facilitating interdisciplinary connections, fostering team science, and encouraging boundary-spanning partnerships.

Prior to joining MSU in January 2022, Nicole served as the Assistant Director for Interdisciplinary Science at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). There, she coached scholars through every stage of the interdisciplinary research process, from building teams, to enhancing collaborative skills, to developing boundary-spanning ideas into funded proposals and actionable outcomes.

In addition to helping others realize their own research goals and potential, Nicole is an active interdisciplinary collaborator herself. She is a co-I on an active NASA LCLUC grant that integrates demographic shifts in Mongolia with UAV-derived vegetation information to better understand grassland health and inform sustainable development pathways. She also served as the PI of an international, interdisciplinary effort funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation that developed a global framework for evaluating the socio-ecological impacts of ocean planning as a previously untested governance tool. In total, she has been awarded over $1 million in research grants so far.

For her contributions to interdisciplinary research, Nicole has been recognized by the likes of Michigan State University’s Center for Interdisciplinarity with a Visiting Fellowship in 2019, as well as the National Academies, which in 2020 formally sought her counsel on measuring convergence research. She received her PhD in Geographical Sciences in 2017 from the University of Maryland, College Park.