Event
Event Details
Where:
Virtual
Virtual
When:
February 9 - 11, 2026
February 9 - 11, 2026
Hear from Attain Partners during the 2026 SRAI Financial Management Conference
Join Attain Partners alongside fellow thought leaders, experts, and professionals to engage in meaningful dialogue, exchange best practices, and explore the latest trends shaping financial and post-award practices in research administration during SRAI’s 2026 Financial Management Conference, taking place virtually February 9–11.
M101: Federal Costing Updates
Monday, February 9 | 12:30p – 1:30p ET
Speaker
- Gil Tran, CPA, Senior Specialist Leader, Attain Partners
M105: Funding Research Information and Data Services: Exploring Cost Recovery Models with Libraries
Monday, February 9 | 12:30p – 1:30p ET
Shifting assumptions about research funding, including a potential 15% administrative cap on federal F&A rates, may reshape institutional cost-recovery strategies. Libraries are emerging as critical partners in research administration’s efforts to maintain research support infrastructure. This session brings together institutional experience and costing expertise to demonstrate how research offices and libraries can collaborate to identify, document, and directly charge research information and data services to sponsored projects, transforming what has traditionally been recovered through indirect costs into allowable, allocable direct charges.
Speakers will present practical frameworks for implementing direct charging models. Drawing from library costing across multiple institutions, this session demonstrates how libraries shoulder significant compliance responsibilities, including data management planning and open access mandates, that directly benefit sponsored projects and can be appropriately charged as direct costs. Attendees will learn about FAIR (Financial Accountability in Research) principles to library service documentation.
The session provides actionable strategies for research offices to partner with libraries in developing service inventories, cost calculation methodologies, and implementation roadmaps that satisfy sponsor requirements while enhancing research outcomes.
Learning Objectives
- Identify direct chargeable library services that support sponsored research, including research information services, data management support, systematic review services, and specialized collections access
- Develop partnership strategies between research offices and libraries to inventory services, calculate costs, and create implementation plans for direct charging models
Speakers
- Hilary A. Craiglow, Practice Lead, Library Consulting Attain Partners
- Kathleen Halley-Octa, Manager, Attain Partners
- Cynthia Hudson Vitale, Associate Dean, Technology Strategy and Digital Services
W205: Audit-Proofing Your Portfolio: Strategies for Research Admin Success
Wednesday, February 11 | 12:30p – 1:30p ET
Audits can feel intimidating, but they don’t have to be. In research administration, being “audit-ready” really starts long before an audit is on the horizon. It begins at the proposal stage and continues all the way through closeout. In this session, we’ll walk through how simple, practical internal controls can be built into everyday processes to make compliance easier and more predictable.
We’ll also talk about how central and departmental offices can work together more smoothly, strengthening communication and turning hand-offs into true partnerships. Along the way, we’ll look at real case studies (both successes and missteps) to highlight what works, what doesn’t, and what we can learn from each scenario.
Learning Objectives
- Leave with concrete ideas you can put into practice right away to reduce risk
- Approach audits with much more confidence
Speakers
- John Hedberg, Senior Associate, Attain Partners
- Amanda Seymour, Director, Sponsored Programs Accounting, Mississippi State University
