'Incredibly reliable' grant coordinator instrumental to success of countless KU researchers

Mindie Paget
A graphic shows Ashly LoBurgio Basgall on the right and text boxes on the left that read, "Unsung Hero, Ashly LoBurgio Basgall, Life Span Institute"

Ashly LoBurgio Basgall | Grant Coordinator | Life Span Institute | May 2020

Richard Yi described it as “the highest level of research support I’ve experienced in my entire 15 years of submitting extramural grants.”
 
That’s high praise, and it’s aimed at one person’s Herculean effort: Ashly LoBurgio Basgall.
 
As a grant coordinator at KU’s Life Span Institute, Basgall has been instrumental in nearly every grant Yi has submitted through the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research & Treatment in the past two years. But his most recent grant proposal — an $11.4 million project that would form the Center for Behavioral & Psychosocial Health — presented the most significant challenge yet.
 
“It ended up being 821 pages and included a large number of subcontracts and coordination across countless KU units,” said Yi, professor of psychology and director of the Cofrin Logan Center. “Ashly worked nights and weekends, and was as responsible as anyone for getting the application ready for submission.”
 
The team won’t know the outcome of the grant application for a few months, but Basgall’s colleagues aren’t surprised that she stepped up in such a big way.
 
“Ashly is incredibly focused but can still keep 10 to 15 proposals moving forward at the same time,” a co-worker said. “She is conscientious, responsible and incredibly reliable.”
 
If funded, the Center for Behavioral & Psychosocial Health would seek to become a multidisciplinary and translational research center at KU focused on developing new insights and disseminating knowledge on the role of interpersonal, familial, neighborhood, sociocultural and physical environments impacting health-relevant behaviors.
 
And Basgall, who has worked at the Life Span Institute for five years, will have been instrumental in its formation.
 
“The only people aware of Ashly’s extraordinary effort on this project are me and her colleagues in the Life Span Institute,” Yi said. “She deserves broader recognition.”