Tag: Institutional Development Award

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Q&A with NIGMS-Funded PECASE Winners

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Each year, NIH nominates outstanding young scientists for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to scientists beginning their independent research careers. The scientists are selected for their innovative research record, potential to continue on this productive route and community service activities. Photo of Blake Wiedenheft (top) and Aimee Shen (bottom).Among this year’s PECASE recipients (nominated in 2014) are two NIGMS grantees, Tufts University’s Aimee Shen (who started her career at the University of Vermont) and Montana State University’s Blake Wiedenheft (who was the inaugural NIGMS Director’s Early Career Investigator Lecturer). Both scientists launched their labs with support from our Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program, which fosters health-related research and enhances the competitiveness of investigators at institutions in states with historically low levels of NIH funding.

Below, they answer questions about their research and community service efforts, offer advice to other early career scientists, and share their experiences with the IDeA program.

What is the focus of your research?

Blake Wiedenheft: Viruses that infect bacteria (i.e., bacteriophages) are the most abundant biological entities on earth. The selective pressures imposed by these pervasive predators have a profound impact on the composition and the behavior of microbial communities in every ecological setting. In my lab, we rely on a combination of techniques from bioinformatics, genetics, biochemistry and structural biology to understand the mechanisms that bacteria use to defend themselves from viral infection.

Aimee Shen: My lab studies Clostridium difficile, the leading cause of healthcare-associated infection in the United States. C. difficile forms metabolically dormant cells known as spores that allow the microbe to survive exit from the gastrointestinal tract of a mammalian host. My research is directed at understanding how C. difficile spores form in order to transmit infection and how they germinate and transform into disease-causing cells to initiate infection.

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Apply for the IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network Program

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NIH has launched a major new initiative called the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program to investigate environmental exposures on child health and development. An important component of the program will be the IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network (ISPCTN), which the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is leading in collaboration with us.

The ISPCTN will give medically underserved and rural populations access to state-of-the-art pediatric clinical trials. The network’s clinical trials sites, which will be located in states eligible for funding through our Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program, will receive support for the development of appropriate research infrastructure as well as supervised professional development in all aspects of clinical trials research and implementation. We expect the ISPCTN to help strengthen pediatric research opportunities and capacity in IDeA states, which historically have not received extensive NIH funding.

If you’re in an IDeA-eligible state (including Puerto Rico), we encourage you to apply to either or both of the ISPCTN FOAs:

Applications proposing studies on all pediatric diseases and conditions will be considered, but priority will be given to those on the focus areas and core elements of the ECHO program, which include upper and lower airway disease; obesity; pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes; and neurodevelopment. The application deadline for both announcements is April 15, 2016, with optional letters of intent due by March 15, 2016.

For more information about the ECHO program and its various FOAs, you can participate in webinars scheduled for January 14, 2016, and February 1, 2016, or contact one of us (douthardr@mail.nih.gov, gorospejr@mail.nih.gov).

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Establishment of Our Center for Research Capacity Building

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I am pleased to announce that we have established a new Center for Research Capacity Building (CRCB). It will serve as the hub for our capacity-building programs, which include the Institutional Development Award (IDeA), Support of Competitive Research (SCORE) and Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH).

We appreciate the comments we received in response to our requests for public input on the proposed organizational change. They reflected strong support for creating the center.

The new center’s activities are focused in states that historically have not received significant levels of NIH research funding and at institutions that have a historical mission focused on serving students from underrepresented groups.

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Give Input on Proposed Center for Research Capacity Building

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At our recent Advisory Council meeting, I announced that we are proposing the establishment of a new organizational unit in NIGMS: the Center for Research Capacity Building (CRCB). As the name implies, it would serve as the hub for our capacity-building programs, which include the Institutional Development Award (IDeA), Support of Competitive Research (SCORE) and Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH). These programs are now housed in a branch of our Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity.

Among the factors that contributed to this plan are the complexity of our capacity-building programs and the broad range of scientific areas and grant mechanisms they support. We believe that the new organizational structure would allow for more efficient planning, coordination and execution among these programs’ research, research training and research resource access activities.

The head of the new center would report directly to me and be part of the Institute’s senior leadership. Beyond that change, we do not plan to alter the missions, goals, staff or budgets of the IDeA, SCORE and NARCH programs as a result of the reorganization. Also remaining the same would be the review of applications and most grants management and review staff assignments.

We invite your input to inform our planning. Please post your comments by February 18, 2015.

Update: Thank you for your valuable input on this organizational change. A post announcing the establishment of the center is at http://loop.nigms.nih.gov/2015/05/establishment-of-our-center-for-research-capacity-building/