Research Festival

NIH Research Festival Hosts Postdoc Poster-Palooza

Annual Event Highlights Contributions of IRP Postdoctoral Fellows

Dr. Subhash Verma

At lunchtime last Wednesday, the NIH Clinical Center’s FAES Terrace echoed with the joyful sounds of scientists nourishing their bodies and their brains. While those stopping by the annual NIH Research Festival poster session could be forgiven for making a beeline straight for the food — including the submissions to this year’s Scientific Directors’ baking competition — once their plates were full, they took advantage of the opportunity to satiate their scientific curiosity as well by checking out the dozens of posters on display.

It's Time for a Science FARE!

Speaking at the NIH Research Festival in September, Michael Gottesman, M.D., the NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research said, “The real research is being done by the fellows, by the students.” The FARE awards are meant to commend those researchers doing outstanding work at the NIH.

FARE poster presenter at NIH Research Festival

What’s Your Science?

What could be better than a big festival celebration? How about a festival celebrating science! Sounds like a nerd’s dream, right? Read more...

Previewing NIH’s Future at #ResearchFest 2015

With the Long-Term IRP Planning Report in hand, the 28th annual NIH Research Festival committee organized the 2015 event around the theme of A Celebration of Intramural Science to honor not only what has been achieved but also what is yet to come.

Inside NIH’s Research Festival

As I trekked along the manicured sidewalk of Convent Drive, heading toward Building 10, I felt the now-familiar weight of the poster tube hanging over my shoulder. Inside that poster tube was, as the name implies, a scientific poster with which I was extremely familiar. My calves burned underneath the intensity of my power walk, as I remained calm and ready to present my project about mice undergoing anesthesia.

Lucy Bauer interviews Dr. Brenda Klaunberg of NIH Mouse Imaging Facility at ResearchFest

The New OIR Web Site: Your Definitive “Source(book)”

Following on the successful launch and continued expansion of the IRP Web site, we turned our attention to developing a new, allied Web site to give people a broader view of the programs overseen by the Office of Intramural Research (OIR). The new site (oir.nih.gov), which is officially making its debut today, is intended to provide “one-stop shopping” regarding the oversight and coordination of the research, training, and technology transfer activities that take place within each Institute’s and Center’s intramural program, across all of our research campuses nationwide.

New OIR Website and Sourcebook

A Science Fair, All Grown Up

For the junior scientist, the poster session is a rite of passage, an opportunity to think about the big picture, and an exercise in communicating your work to a broad audience.

Subhashini Jagu

Era of the Brain at 2014 NIH Research Festival

The NIH Research Festival always has a strong theme running through it, from “Bench-to-Bedside” in 2002 and “Chromosomes in Modern Biology and Medicine” in 2007 to “The NIH at 125: Today's Discoveries, Tomorrow's Cures” in 2012. The year 2014 was no different, but it marked the first time that the Festival was focused on a single organ within the human body: the brain.

2014 NIH Research Festival

Top Scientific Brains Discuss Brain Science at NIH #ResearchFest Plenary

The NIH Research Festival this year was themed “The Era of the Brain,” so Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director, began the plenary session by highlighting the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). The President’s initiative has been the talk of the town recently and, thanks to some hard work by the leaders at the NIH, has now been transformed into a 12-year scientific vision.

FARE Plenary session

Let There Be Light!

Optogenetics, a new technology used to control brain activity with light, has revolutionized the field of neuroscience in the past decade. The combination of two powerful tools, genetics and optics, has provided both temporal and spatial acuity in understanding how the brain works in response to sensory and motor cues in the environment. At the recent NIH Research Festival symposium titled “Optogenetic approaches to investigating the nervous system,” fellows and scientists from the NIH community presented their research encompassing topics that make use of this approach to study different systems.

Optogenetics