Narmon Tulsi has secured Flinders University’s first ever award in the Research Management Excellence category of the Association of Tertiary Education Management’s (ATEM) annual awards. He is also Flinders’ first individual winner in any ATEM Award – while noting that a team of professional staff from the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences won an award in the Excellence in School and Faculty Management category in 2019.

Mr Tulsi received the award for demonstrating consistent Research Management excellence with respect to his strategic grant development and ‘out of the box’ approach with the College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences from 2018 to 2022, across three Directors of RDS, three Deans of Research and three Vice President and Executive Deans.

In particular, the award acknowledges the importance of the excellent relationships Mr Tulsi has fostered between research professionals and academics. His consistent and ongoing work on strategic grant development, along with fostering relationships and research excellence, has CHASS currently rated the highest performing College at Flinders, in terms of success rates for ARC grant proposals over the past five years.

This award completes a successful year for Mr Tulsi, who achieved another Flinders’ first by taking the Australasian Research Management Society RMIT Paul Taylor Award for Research Management Excellence. Mr Tulsi was also a recipient of a Professional Excellence Award, Research Management from Flinders University and the 2022 Flinder Excellence Awards in last week’s Staff Awards.

The national ATEM award is not necessarily given out every year, and has only ever been won by an individual twice since the awards began in 2012 – on both occasions by senior executives including an Executive Director of a research office. Flinders joins the company of previous successful applicants regarding Research Management Excellence Awards including UNSW, University of Newcastle, and University of Wollongong.

ATEM Inc is a professional body for tertiary education administrators and managers across Australia, New Zealand (Aotearoa), the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, with around 1200 individuals and more than 70 organisations including universities, TAFEs, polytechnics, private providers, government departments and other related organisations.