Announcements

PROBIOTICS, MICROBIOME, AND HOST IMMUNE RESPONSE

Monday, September 9, 2013
10:00–11:00 a.m.
Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10)

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) presents “Probiotics, the Microbiome, and Host Immune Response—Insights for Novel Therapeutic Approaches” by Patricia Hibberd, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health. The lecture, part of NCCAM’s Integrative Medicine Research Lecture series. Hibberd is a practicing infectious diseases physician and researcher, focusing on ways in which probiotics may be able to prevent and treat infectious disease. Although a wide range of probiotics are consumed by millions of people on a daily basis for boosting general health and well-being, there is little information about the safety and efficacy of these products to prevent or treat illness. This talk will focus on research around four clinical trials that utilized the probiotic Lactobacillus GG to address safety. Findings show that although some mild gastrointestinal side effects are more common in subjects receiving probiotics than placebo, almost all side effects are mild and are not likely related to consuming probiotics.

PRINCIPLES OF BIG DATA

Thursday, September 12, 2013
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Building 50, Room 1328/1334

The NIH Biomedical Computing Interest Group (BCIG) presents “Principles of Big Data: Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing Complex Information” by Jules J. Berman, Ph.D., M.D. Berman will discuss five topics from his recently published book, Principles of Big Data. These topics have been chosen because their special relevance to NIH researchers:

• Identifiers: you cannot create a good Big Data resource without them.
• Data should be described with metadata, and the metadata descriptors should be organized under a classification or an ontology.
• Big Data must be immutable.
• Big Data must be accessible to the public if it is to have any scientific value.
• Data analysis is important, but data re-analysis is much more important.

Berman is board certified in anatomic pathology and in cytopathology and has held appointments at the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. In 1998, he became a Medical Officer at NCI and served as the Program Director for Pathology Informatics in the Institute's Cancer Diagnosis Program. In 2011 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Pathology Informatics. For more information, contact Jim DeLeo, jdeleo@nih.gov.

THE ANITA B. ROBERTS FALL LECTURE

Tuesday, September 17, 2013, 1:00 p.m.
Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10)

Wei Yang, section chief of NIDDK’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, will give the fall seminar honoring the memory of Anita B. Roberts, former chief of NCI’s Laboratory of Cell Regulation and Carcinogenesis and an exceptional mentor and scientist. Yang’s talk, “Seeing Is Believing: Functional Biology at Atomic Resolution,” is sponsored by the NIH Women Scientist Advisors Committee and the Office of Research on Women’s Health. This seminar series highlights outstanding research achievements of women scientists in the Intramural Research Program at the NIH. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations to participate should contact Margaret McBurney at 301-496-1921 and/or Federal Relay, 1-800-877-8339, five days before the lecture.

NIH SUPPLY CENTER BLOWOUT SALE!

Hurry! The NIH Supply Center and its Self Services Stores (SSS) are discounting a huge of amount of stock to make room for new items. Office and laboratory items are being reduced weekly. Get these products while supplies last. Our goal is to provide more responsive support to our customers. Self Service Store campus locations (Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.): BLDG 10, Room B2B41 (301-496-2051); Building 31, Room B1A47 (301-496-4430). View the list of reduced items at http://nihsc.od.nih.gov/Promotions.aspx.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON LECTURE SERIES 2013–2014

Begins Monday, September 9; Then Most Wednesdays
3:00–4:00 p.m.
Masur Auditorium (Building 10)

The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, colloquially known as WALS, is the highest-profile lecture program at the NIH. Each season includes some of the biggest names in biomedical and behavioral research. The goal of WALS is to keep NIH researchers abreast of the latest and most important research in the United States and beyond. All speakers are nominated by the NIH community. For more information, contact WALS and trans-NIH events coordinator Jackie Roberts (301-594-6747 or robertsjm@od.nih.gov); join the WALS LISTSERV (https://list.nih.gov and search for “WALS”); or visit the WALS Web site at http://wals.od.nih.gov.

MONDAY, September 9: Cori Bargmann (The Rockefeller University), “Neuromodulatory Circuits and Motivated Behavior”
September 11: Jeffrey Esko (University of California, San Diego), “Proteoglycans: Arbiters of Lipoprotein Metabolism”
September 18: No WALS
September 25: The Annual Robert S. Gordon Lecture, Moyses Szklo (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), “Epidemiology: Back to Translation”
October 2: Taekjip Ha (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Genome Maintenance up Close and Personal: Eavesdropping on Single Molecular Conversations”
October 3 (Thursday): Special Director’s Lecture, Shinya Yamanaka (Kyoto University and Gladstone Institutes), “Recent Progress in iPS Cell Research towards Regenerative Medicine”
October 9: No WALS, NIH Research Festival from October 7 to 11
October 16: Joseph Gall (Carnegie Institute for Science), “Giant Chromosomes and Deep Sequences: What the Frog Egg Tells Us about RNA Transcription”
October 23: The Annual DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Lecture; Ron Vale (University of California, San Francisco), “The Mechanisms of Cytoskeletal Motor Proteins”
October 30: The Annual George Khoury Lecture, Carl Wu (HHMI Janelia Farms), “Chromatin Structure and the Control of Gene Expression”
November 6: NIH Director’s Lecture (first of three), Erica Ollmann Saphire (Scripps Research Institute), “The Structural Basis of Ebola Viral Pathogenesis”
November 13: John Carpten (Translational Genomics Research Institute), “Comprehensive Molecular Profiling to Support Treatment Recommendations for Advanced Cancer”
November 20: Annual Astute Clinician Lecture, Marston Linehan (NCI-CCR), “The Genetic Basis of Kidney Cancer: Targeting the Metabolic Basis of Disease”
November 27: No WALS, Thanksgiving break

NIH RESEARCH FESTIVAL

October 7–11, 2013
FAES Academic Center (Building 10)
Masur Auditorium (Building 10)

Find out what’s going on in NIH research: Attend lectures, minisymposia, poster sessions, and more during this week-long festival. Don’t miss the special poster session on Monday, October 7, at which the scientific directors will showcase their work. For more information and schedules, visit http://researchfestival.nih.gov or contact Jacqueline Roberts at 301-594-6747 or robertsjm@od.nih.gov.

INFLAMMATION, MICROBIOTA, AND CANCER

September 19–20, 2013
Masur Auditorium; Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10)

The NCI Center for Cancer Research is hosting a two-day national symposium titled “Inflammation, Microbiota, and Cancer.” The program includes recent advances in the field and should be an exciting forum for discussion and debate on the current understanding of cancer and inflammation. Topics include Inflammation and Microbiota (Fiona Powrie, Julie Segre, Heidi Kong, Yasmine Belkaid, Giorgio Trinchieri, Jay Berzofsky ); Cancer, Microbiota, and Metabolism (Stephen Hursting, Cari Meinhold Kitahara, Bin Gao, Alfred Goldberg, Luigi Ferrucci, Martin Blaser); miRNAs, Cancer and Inflammation (Carlo Croce, Curt Harris, Xin Wang, Shyam Sharan, Howard Young, Kevin Struhl, Christophe Cataisson, Yinling Hu); and Cancer, Inflammation and Immunity (Raymond Dubois, Jerome Galon, Myriam Merad, Thirunula-Devi Kanneganti, Tyler Jacks). Registration is free, but seating is limited. Information is posted at http://ncifrederick.cancer.gov/events/microbiota/default.asp.

KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY FOR CRITICAL CARE, A MIMIC-II STORY

Monday, September 23, 2013
10:30–11:30 a.m.
Natcher Conference Center (Building 45), Room B

Lecture and dialogue session on “Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care II (MIMIC-II): A public-access intensive care unit database” with representatives from MIMIC. For more information, contact Jim DeLeo at jdeleo@nih.gov.

PANCREATIC CANCER

Monday, September 23, 2013
Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

The NCI Center for Cancer Research is hosting a half-day symposium titled “Current Progress and Future Challenges in Pancreatic Cancer.” The program includes recent advances in the field and should be an exciting forum for discussion and debate on current understanding of the development, progression and therapeutic resistance of pancreatic cancer. Topics include: genetics and epigenetics, inflammatory mediators, and tumor-stromal interaction. For more information and to register, go to http://ncifrederick.cancer.gov/events/Pancreaticcancer/default.asp.

For conference-related questions, contact Romi Sawhney at sawhneyr@mail.nih.gov.

CARDIOVASCULAR REGENERATIVE MEDICINE

September 25–26, 2013
Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

The NHLBI Symposium on Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine, will bring together experts in basic stem cell biology, as well as clinical cardiovascular medicine, to discuss the emerging basic and developmental science, preclinical animal advances and potential clinical applications. Topics will include general and cardiovascular stem cells, clinical applications, tissue engineering, developmental biology, and large-scale proteomics/metabolomics as a tool to identify new clinical deliverables. For more information and to register, go to http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/events/2013-nhlbi-cvregenmed.

NATIONAL GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE (NGSRC)

October 6–8, 2013 (in conjunction with the NIH Research Festival)
FAES Academic Center (Building 10)
Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

Ninety advanced graduate students from across the United States will come to the Bethesda campus for this NIH-sponsored scientific meeting. These future leaders of the biomedical research community will have the opportunity to share their own cutting-edge research and learn about scientific advances being made, right now, in the NIH Intramural Research Program. NIH investigators will have the opportunity to recruit conference participants to join their research groups as postdoctoral fellows. Conference attendees will be selected competitively from an applicant pool of more than 500. In the past, they have been racially and ethnically diverse, represented most states, and come from a variety of prestigious institutions of higher education. The NGSRC agenda includes career- and professional-development workshops, a panel of former NIH trainees discussing their career trajectories, and NIH Research Festival poster sessions that give conference participants the opportunity to present and discuss their graduate research. NIH investigators and current postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to visit the posters to discuss potential collaborations and new research directions and learn firsthand about novel techniques and approaches that could enhance their investigations. For more information visit https://www.training.nih.gov/events/recurring/nih_national_graduate_student_research_festival.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF CLINICAL RESEARCH

Registration deadline: October 8, 2013
October 15, 2013–March 24, 2014
Monday and Tuesday evenings
5:00–6:30 p.m.
Bethesda campus

This free course will be of interest to physicians and all other health professionals planning a career in clinical research. The curriculum has been enhanced and will include additional lectures providing more-comprehensive content on clinical research infrastructure. A certificate will be awarded on successful completion of the course, which is based on a final examination. The course will enable participants to become familiar with the basic epidemiologic methods involved in clinical research; to discuss the principles involved in the ethics of clinical research, the legal issues in clinical research, and the regulations involved in human subjects research, including the role of institutional review boards in clinical research; to become familiar with the principles and issues involved in monitoring patient-oriented research; to be able to discuss the infrastructure required in performing clinical research; and to have an understanding of the steps involved in developing and funding research studies. It’s suggested that participants acquire a copy of the textbook, Principles and Practice of Clinical Research, Third Edition. In addition, participants may want to consider enrolling in a course in biostatistics, such as STAT 200 or STAT 500, currently offered by the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences. For more information or to register, visit http://www.cc.nih.gov/training/training/ippcr/application.html or call the CC’s Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education (301-496-9425). An e-mail confirmation will be sent to those accepted into the program. If you require reasonable accommodation, call 301-496-9425 (8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.) at least seven business days before the event.

SUMMIT ON ADVANCES IN GEROSCIENCE: IMPACT ON HEALTHSPAN AND CHRONIC DISEASE

October 30-31, 2013
Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)
Conference is free, but registration is required

The Geroscience Summit seeks to bring together investigators in the basic biology of aging with those focused on diseases associated with growing older. Because aging is the major risk factor for most non-genetic chronic diseases, an understanding of the role of aging in the onset of disease should open up new avenues for disease prevention and cures. In addition to a plenary session launched by NIH Director Francis Collins, there will be seven scientific sessions (featuring more than 50 top scientists, both intramural and extramural) on inflammation, adaptation to stress, epigenetics and regulatory RNA, metabolism, macromolecular damage, proteostasis, and stem cells and regeneration. The Summit program was developed by the trans-NIH GeroScience Interest Group (GSIG), a recently formed group focused on the relationships between aging and age-related disease and disability. The GSIG is among the largest trans-NIH interest groups. Attendance at the meeting is free, but registration at www.geron.org/gerosciencesummit is required for planning purposes. The meeting is being supported by the Alliance for Aging Research and the Gerontological Society of America.

NIH COMMUNITY COLLEGE DAY 2013

Friday, October 25, 2013
8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Natcher Conference Center (Buildling 45) and Lister Hill Auditorium (Building 38A)

The NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education is pleased to announce NIH Community College Day 2013. This event will provide community college students and faculty an opportunity to visit the NIH campus and to learn about careers and training opportunities in biomedical and health care fields. To register and for more information, visit www.training.nih.gov.

To submit announcements for publication in the NIH Catalyst, e-mail catalyst@nih.gov; or fax 301-402-4303; or mail The NIH Catalyst, Building 1, Room 333; or call 301-402-1449. For DEADLINES, see https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/share-your-story. The DEADLINE for the November-December issue is October 1, 2013.