Our First AAAS Webinar

All Eyes on the NIH

By Christopher Wanjek

The NIH intramural research program hosted its first Science/American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Webinar on February 29, titled “Applying New Imaging Techniques to Your Research: Advice from the Experts.” This featured Hari Shroff (NIBIB), Sriram Subramaniam (NCI), and Clare Waterman (NHLBI).

The pre-event buzz was promising—nearly 2,400 researchers worldwide registered to participate, the largest number for any Science/AAAS Webinar—and, indeed, close to that many did watch, while hundreds more may view the archive.

The committee for promoting the IRP, the same group that has created the Web site at https://irp.nih.gov, had a pointed goal for producing this Webinar: to highlight homegrown NIH research, what we call intramural . . . and, hopefully, what the world will now understand as “intramural.” In short, this event was as much a recruitment and publicity tool as it was an excellent training opportunity for scientists.

We have an identity crisis, as you know, with many scientists viewing the NIH primarily as a grant-allocating organization. The term “intramural,” to the outsider, doesn’t drive home the fact that we have approximately 8,000 scientists and a hospital devoted to clinical research. Anyone watching the February 29 Webinar, though, archived for free viewing at http://Webinar.sciencemag.org/Webinar/archive/applying-new-imaging-techniques-your-research, will clearly understand that

Shroff, Subramaniam, and Waterman are leading experts working in NIH labs and loving it.

In these cash-strapped times, such alternate forms of publicity may prove to be a solid investment. For the price of a couple of full-page Science ads, we placed ourselves in front of a key target audience. Our three speakers—whether they are ready or not—have since been contacted by a range of researchers and potential collaborators with impassioned questions.

Funding permitting, the committee hopes to produce a few Webinars per year. We have many ideas for topics, and we welcome your suggestions, too. Write to us at IRPinfo@mail.nih.gov.

Special thanks to NIH Events Management for providing support to Science/AAAS.