IRP Life

New Study Categorizes Biomedical Careers

After postdoctoral fellows in biomedical research complete their training, they are prepared to land permanent positions that utilize their unique research skills. While some may choose the traditional academic route, and become tenure-track scientists, many take posts that keep them engaged in science, but not necessarily doing research.

For the first time at the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), these non-faculty jobs, and the numbers of NIEHS postdocs in them, are broken down in a study that appeared online in the January 15 issue of Nature Biotechnology. The paper discussed a new tool that visualized the kinds of work the former postdocs were doing.

graphs showing career outcomes for NIEHS postdocs

A Quarter-Century of Advocating for NIH Women Scientists

On December 22, 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming February 11 of each year as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, with the goal of highlighting the important contributions of women to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Here at NIH, a dedicated group of scientists known as the Women Scientist Advisors (WSA) is working not only to recognize the role of women in the biomedical sciences but to expand it as well.

female scientist looking into a microscope

New Scientific Directors, and More to Come

Meet the NIH Scientific Directors and their programs

We’ve had a few changes on our Board of Scientific Directors in the past year, so I thought I’d give you an update. Each NIH Institute or Center (IC) with an intramural program has a scientific director (SD). The NCI, NIAID, NLM, and NIEHS are programmatically diverse and require additional leaders with SD functions. So, although 24 ICs have principal SDs, there are actually 30 people who function as scientific directors.

These SDs are responsible for the intramural budgets of their institutes. Most run their own labs. They also have numerous other responsibilities.

RNA Biology Comes into Focus

mRNA

There are many ways to categorize the research performed at the NIH Intramural Research Program: biomedical or behavioral; computational, basic, translational, or clinical; excellent or outstanding; wow or double-wow; and so on. When we launched the irp.nih.gov website, we utilized the concept of scientific focus areas, or SFAs, and identified 21 such SFAs at the IRP, from biomedical engineering & biophysics to virology.

We thought the 21 SFAs did a rather nice job of summing up all the diverse science in the IRP. Then along comes RNA biology. It's not as if the field is new; some 30 Nobel Prizes have been won involving RNA over the decades. But the field has had a renaissance in recent years with discoveries such as that of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) functioning in genome defense and chromosome inactivation. Newly revealed classes of RNAs and their remarkable functions are poised to revolutionize molecular biology, with profound implications for clinical sciences.

Guest Blog – Aaron Ramsay

Reblog via The Children’s Inn at NIH: Family Stories.

Photo of Aaron smiling on a boat

When I first came to The Children’s Inn in June of 2016, I had no idea what it would mean to me. The next several months, though, certainly ended up being some of the most transformational months of my life. I first came to The Inn as a 19-year-old who had somehow managed to finish his first year of college, even while dealing with a harsh genetic disease known as sickle cell anemia. After staying at The Inn for nearly five months, I left as a man, entering his second year of college, having been healed from the disease that once shaped his life.

NIH Family Members Giving Back: Diane Baker

Reblogged from the NIH Director’s Blog.

Francis Collins and wife Diane volunteer to make dinner for patients and their families at The Children’s Inn at NIH.

My blog usually celebrates biomedical advances made possible by NIH-supported research. But every August, I like to try something different and highlight an aspect of the scientific world that might not make headlines. This year, I’d like to take a moment to pay tribute to just a few of the many NIH family members around the country who, without pay or fanfare, freely give of themselves to make a difference in their communities. I’d like to start by recognizing my wife Diane Baker, a genetic counselor who has always found time during her busy career to volunteer.

Summer Outside at the NIH

Children's Inn

It’s the middle of summer and you should get outside! This month I'm sharing some landscape photos of the National Institutes of Health main campus from our History Office collection to inspire you to get outside to play, like this one of the playground at the Children’s Inn.

Meet Taezia

Reblog from The Children's Inn at NIH.

When Taezia was 4 years old, an MRI showed a myriad of tumors crowding her organs and wrapping themselves around her spine. Without emergency surgery, Taezia would lose her ability to walk and become paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors knew they couldn’t remove the entire tumor, but their goal was to “debulk” it enough to preserve Taezia’s ability to walk and move around.

Lasker Scholars — And Then There Were 14

Lasker Scholars Mehta and Gill

The NIH Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program is approaching a milestone. This program is a unique intramural–extramural partnership that aims to nurture a new generation of clinical researchers with dedicated support to help them establish a research career.

Studying ADHD from Genes to the Brain Connectome

Contributed by an NIH clinical trial participant.

A magnetic resonance image (MRI) of a brain

My 8-year-old nephew Luke has a sixth-grade reading level, while still in the third grade. Yet, he often struggles to finish his chores. He carries a timer in his backpack to keep himself on task. His school provides Luke with special assistance, including extra time for tests and repeated, detailed instruction. The challenges arise because Luke, like his mother Rebecca, has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).