Gunta J. Liders has been named director of the University of Rochester's Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA), the office administering grants and contracts for research. The University is consistently within the top 30 colleges and universities in terms of sponsored research programs; in 1999-2000, research expenditures totaled more than $196 million.
Liders was ORPA's associate director from 1997 to 1999. She joined ORPA in 1987 as a research administrator, and served successively as senior research administrator, assistant director, acting director, and associate director. From 1983 to 1986, she was the administrator for the Department of Electrical Engineering's Production Automation Project.
She is the University's primary representative to the Council on Governmental Relations, and is the Mid-Atlantic Chapter secretary-treasurer of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) and co-editor of the NCURA newsletter. She also serves as an external reviewer and financial consultant for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health.
Liders, who holds a bachelor's degree from the University and a master's degree from George Washington University, is a third-generation University employee. Her grandmother, Gertrude Jansons, was a "custodian" (a residence hall staff member) at Cutler Union for Eastman School students, and her mother, Vivian Liders, worked as a library assistant at Rush Rhees Library. Her father, Igor Liders, an architect with Miller, Meyer, Kaelber and Unger, also worked on many buildings on campus.