Announcements

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

FOR A SPECIAL PANEL FOR RESEARCH-MISCONDUCT INQUIRIES

Research misconduct tarnishes the NIH’s reputation and affects everyone. Although these issues are uncomfortable, they must be dealt with expeditiously to ensure fairness and due process for those accused. The biggest difficulty in ensuring a prompt, fair process is finding qualified individuals with sufficient time to participate in this process. An “Inquiry” is similar to a Grand Jury proceeding, in which the main question is whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed with an “Investigation”; an “Inquiry” does not determine whether “Research Misconduct” occurred. This process takes 60 days and requires a formal report at the end. The Office of Intramural Research hopes to establish a pool of qualified investigators from a variety of ICs in many disciplines to participate in this process. You may find helping with an “Inquiry” a valuable learning experience. If you are willing and interested in assisting in this critical work, contact Pat Weitzel [pat.weitzel@nih.gov] or Melissa Colbert [colbertmc@od.nih.gov] (Agency Research Integrity Officer) for additional details.

CLINICAL CENTER FOCUS GROUPS

To sign up (NIH employees, contractors, and trainees): http://intranet.cc.nih.gov/focusgroups.html

(a separate site for patients will be provided soon)

As announced at the Clinical Center (CC) Town Hall meeting, held on September 7, 2016, interested NIH staff and contractors are invited to sign up for focus groups to discuss the environment for patient care and safety in the CC and about ways to improve both the practice and the process by which we carry out our research mission. Our collective goal is to begin to articulate areas in which improvements can be made and to collect specific recommendations on how to best achieve those improvements. As clearly stated by the new CC Hospital Board, the only way to make effective changes at the CC is to engage all staff who are involved in patient care and research.

Each focus group will be made up of about 20 people and will be facilitated by Stewart Simonson, who was the first assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001–2006).

Two groups have been formed to help guide this process. A steering committee consisting of senior NIH clinical leadership has been established to work with Simonson. Additionally, a group of clinical-care providers and CC staff from all levels of the organization, called the clinical care group, will work with the focus groups and begin to formulate specific recommendations for changes based on the feedback obtained.

Please sign up for a focus group so we can continue to get your input on changes that will improve our patient care and safety at the CC.

MINERALS IN MEDICINE EXHIBITION

Monday, September 12, 4:00–5:00 pm

NIH Clinical Center, Building 10

Art Exhibit Located On 1st Floor Near Admissions

The NIH Clinical Center in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution invites you to the “Minerals in Medicine” exhibition. Minerals and metals are not only interesting to look at and to study in geology class, they are essential elements and components required for human biology. They are also critical for many of the technologies that define our modern medical world and are key to today’s biomedical enterprise. They are used as sources or components of drugs and devices and they are key to innovative technologies. The items in this display are some examples of crystals and minerals critical to keeping ourselves and our bodies healthy and normally functioning and are also key in past, present and new technologies. Without minerals like the ones in this exhibit our health would be in jeopardy, development of new medical technologies could be limited, and lifesaving medications could not be formulated. The items are on loan from the Smithsonian for 18 months.

THE 30TH ANNUAL RESEARCH FESTIVAL

September 14–16, 2016

NIH Clinical Center (Building 10)

The full agenda is available at http://researchfestival.nih.gov and is easily navigable on mobile devices.

Please join us for the “NIH Research Festival: A Celebration of Intramural Science.” Now in its 30th year, the festival is the annual showcase of NIH intramural research, and there will be loads of talks, poster presentations, and activities.

This year NIH Director Francis Collins will be one of the scientific speakers. He will present his work on diabetes during the opening plenary, “Super Enhancers in Cell Identity and Disease,” on September 14. Come hear the NIH Director speak passionately about his own breakthrough research. Plenary sessions begin each day at 10:00 a.m. These also include “New Insights through Clinical Imaging” on September 15 and “Cell-based Immune Therapies” on September 16.

Festival afternoons hold concurrent symposia, poster sessions, and exhibits. Symposia are intended to draw a broad audience and include topics such as bench-to-bedside “home runs,” microbiota, inflammation and chronic disease, precision medicine, computational biology, and the long-term effects of early developmental exposure. Poster sessions cover the diversity of NIH research and include the popular IC and Scientific Director poster presentations and cooking contest.

The NIH Library will host demonstrations of virtual reality and other technology. Ever feel as if you’ve been grabbing at nothing your entire life? Well, why not don a pair of virtual-reality goggles so you can grab at nothing yet really feel as if you are accomplishing something?

Also new this year to the festival, the National Library of Medicine will host morning tours of its collections. The NLM is a national treasure on the NIH campus; come see rare, centuries-old medical books, a Nobel Prize medal, and more.

Festival staples are back, too: the R&W “Taste of Bethesda” lunch, the vendor tent show, the NIH Green Labs Fair, and exhibits on intramural resources. Also integrated into the festival, for a second year, is the NIH Future Research Leaders Conference (FRLC), sponsored by the Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity. The FRLC provides early-stage investigators from the extramural community and from diverse backgrounds with an opportunity to learn about the intramural research program and meet NIH PIs and scientific leadership.

WALS BEGINS ON SEPTEMBER 21

Most Wednesdays (except as noted), 3:00-4:00 p.m.

Masur Auditorium (Building 10)

Website: https://oir.nih.gov/wals

The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) brings the world’s best scientific investigators to your doorstep, and the upcoming 2016–2017 season is no exception. We kick off the season on September 21 with a lecture by David Reich of Harvard Medical School, who has provided amazing insights on disease susceptibility by comparing modern human DNA with the genome of chimpanzees, Neanderthals, and other Homininae. One week later we host Carl June of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a pioneer of immunotherapy. Other speakers include George Church (Harvard), Doug Melton (Harvard), and Nobel laureate Linda Buck (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center).

September 21: David Reich (Harvard Medical School), NIH Director’s Lecture: “Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past”

September 28: Carl H. June (Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania), NIH Director’s Lecture: “Engineering T Cells: Moving beyond Leukemia”

October 5: Elizabeth Ofili (Morehouse School of Medicine), “Democratizing Discovery Science With n=me”

October 12: No lecture: Yom Kippur

October 19: Thomas O’Halloran (Northwestern University), Stetten Lecture: [title to come]

November 2: Ronald Falk (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Astute Clinician Lecture, “Perspective on Autoimmunity: A View from the ANCA Vasculitis Looking Glass”

November 7 (Monday): Laurie Glimcher (Weill Cornell Medical College), Inaugural William Paul Lecture

November 9: Xuetao Cao (Peking Union Medical College), “Innate Molecules in the Inflammation and Cancer”

November 16: Cisca Wijmenga (University of Groningen), “Germs, Genes, and Host Defense”

November 30: Hopi Hoekstra (Harvard University), “Digging for Genes that Affect Behavior”

WIN ARIAS SYMPOSIUM

Bridging Basic Science and Liver Disease

Friday, September 23, 2016; 2:00–6:00 p.m.

Room 620-630 (Building 35)

Speakers include Lewis Cantley (director, Cancer Center of Weill-Cornell Medical College), who will speak on “PI-3-Kinase and Cancer Metabolism”;

Daniel Jay (Tufts School of Medicine), who will discuss “Extracellular Hsp90: A Hub for Activating the Cancer Invasive Niche”; Lola Reid (University of North Carolina School of Medicine), whose talk is titled “Biliary Tree Stem/Progenitors Give Rise to Liver and Pancreas “; David Shafritz (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), who will speak on “Hepatocyte Transplantation: A Future Therapeutic Option?”; Lawrence Gartner (University of Chicago School of Medicine), who will talk about “A Strange Looking Baby, an MD/PhD Student and Peroxisomes”; Allan Wolkoff (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), who will discuss “Transporter Trafficking through the Hepatocyte: Microtubules, Motors, and Accessory Proteins”; and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (NICHD and group leader at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus), whose talk is titled “Exploring Intracellular Dynamics with Super-resolution Microscopy.”

NLM’S HISTORY OF MEDICINE LECTURES

Website: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/happening/lectures/lectures_2016.html

The lecture series of the NLM’s History of Medicine Division promotes awareness and use of NLM and other historical collections for research, education, and public service in biomedicine, the social sciences, and the humanities. The series also supports the commitment of the NLM to recognizing and celebrating diversity. All lectures will be live-streamed globally and subsequently archived by NIH VideoCasting.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016; 2:00–3:00 p.m., Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A: Brett Bobley (director, Office of Digital Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, NEH), “International Big Data Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Collaboration, Opportunity, and Outcomes.” In 2009, the NEH launched a new, international research competition called the Digging into Data Challenge, a program aimed at bringing together interdisciplinary teams to explore how big data approaches in research could be brought to bear on questions of the humanities and social sciences. Since the launch of the program, Digging into Data grantees have explored how large databases of digital music, images, and texts can be examined computationally in pursuit of humanistic questions. Bobley will provide an overview of Digging into Data and discuss its intersections with medical research, joint activities with NLM, and other digital humanities endeavors at the NEH.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016; 2:00–3:00 p.m., Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10): Louis W. Sullivan (U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, 1989–1993), “A Personal Perspective on Race, Opportunity and the U.S. Health System.” Sullivan relates his life story, growing up in rural Georgia during the period of legally sanctioned and enforced racial segregation and the impact it had on him, his family, and on the black community. He was inspired to become a physician when, at age five, he met the only black physician in Southwest Georgia. After becoming a hematologist and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, he went on to found the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and then was appointed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Tuesday, November 3, 2016; 2:00–3:00 p.m., Lister Hill Auditorium (Building 38A): Psyche Williams-Forson (associate professor and chair, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland at College Park), “Fire and Freedom: Food and Enslavement in Early America.” Meals can tell us how power is exchanged between and among different peoples, races, genders, and classes. In the Chesapeake region during the early colonial era, European settlers survived by relying upon indentured servants, Native Americans, and African slave labor for life-saving knowledge of farming and food acquisition. Without this knowledge, Europeans suffered poor nutrition in addition to widespread illness caused by the lack of medical care. Despite their perilous position, the colonists used human resources, the natural environment, and maritime trade to gain economic prosperity. But it is through the labor of slaves that we can learn about the ways that meals transcend taste and sustenance. Williams-Forson’s lecture will examine how these factors interacted, affecting all sides, a subject further highlighted by a new special display in the History of Medicine Division entitled “Fire and Freedom: Food and Enslavement in Early America,” a cooperative venture with the George Washington historic homestead at Mount Vernon.

FROM METCHNIKOFF TO SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: THE ROLE OF INFLAMMATION AND PHAGOCYTIC CELLS IN CANCER

Thursday & Friday, September 29–30, 2016; 8:15 a.m.–5:30 p.m. both days

Masur Auditorium and Lipsett Amphitheater (Building 10)

Conference website and online registration: http://go.usa.gov/ctvJQ

Register today for this symposium presented by the NCI’s Center of Excellence in Immunology. Registration is free, but seating is limited so be sure to register early. Sessions include: Hematopoiesis and phagocytic cell functional regulation: lessons for cancer biology; myeloid cells in cancer; metabolism in immunity and cancer; from basic studies to promising immune therapies.

CHEN DISTINGUISHED LECTURE ON INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

“Cytokine Signaling: Genes, Genomes and Drugs”

Friday, October 14, 2016; 10:00–11:00 a.m.

Masur Auditorium (Building 10)

To watch the lecture online, visit http://videocast.nih.gov.

The Office of Intramural Research, Office of the Director, NIH, invites you to the 11th annual Philip S. Chen, Jr. Distinguished Lecture on Innovation and Technology Transfer. John O’Shea will present “Cytokine Signaling: Genes, Genomes and Drugs.” O’Shea is scientific director and senior investigator at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Individuals with disabilities who need sign-language interpreters and/or reasonable accommodation to participate in this event should contact Joe Kleinman (301-496-0472) and/or the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339). Requests should be made at least five days in advance of the event.

PFIZER’S CENTERS FOR THERAPEUTIC INNOVATION AT NIH ACCEPTING PROPOSALS

Submission Portal Opens: Sept. 6, 2016

Deadline to submit to Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs): Oct. 7, 2016

Deadline for TTOs to submit to Pfizer CTI: Oct. 14, 2016

More information: https://ncats.nih.gov/cti/proposals

NIH Contact for Questions: Lili Portilla at NIH-PfizerCTI@mail.nih.gov

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) continues to manage NKIH’s collaboration with Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) network (http://ncats.nih.gov/cti). The Pfizer CTI program at NIH is designed to help bridge the gap between early scientific discovery and its translation into new medicines through public-private resource sharing. It pairs leading NIH intramural researchers with Pfizer resources to pursue scientific and medical advances through joint therapeutic development.

The CTI model is the first NIH-wide biologics initiative with a pharmaceutical partner that NCATS coordinates on behalf of all NIH intramural researchers. Goals include identifying biologic compounds with activity in a pathway or target of interest to both the NIH and Pfizer researchers and then together moving the compounds into the clinic to test them.

To set a meeting that can include nonconfidential discussion about preproposal ideas, contact Pfizer CTI Representative Nader Halim at Nader.Halim@pfizer.com and copy NIH-PfizerCTI@mail.nih.gov.

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES EXPO 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016; 12:00–4:30 p.m.

NIH FAES Education Center (Building 10)

For more information: https://www.training.nih.gov/for_expo_exhibitors_and_speakers

The 10th International Opportunities Expo, sponsored by the Visiting Fellows Subcommittee of the NIH Fellows Committee (FelCom), focuses on opportunities for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students interested in pursuing international science careers. Representatives from embassies, funding agencies, and globally minded science and health organizations will be on hand to answer questions and promote their programs and resources. Whether you are in the job market or at the beginning of your training, the expo will provide you with the opportunity to gather the information you will need to consider and/or prepare for an international career.

2016 GLOBAL HEALTH INTEREST GROUP SYMPOSIUM

“The Impact of Technology and Innovation on Global Health”

October 24, 2016; 12:00–5:00 p.m.

Balcony B, Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

Registration deadline: October 21

Registration: http://bit.ly/2bgdHcy

Website: http://sigs.nih.gov/globalhealth/Pages/default.aspx

The Global Health Interest Group (GHIG) invites you to attend the 4th annual GHIG symposium, which will focus on the ways that new technologies and innovative strategies are changing the approach to global health and generating improved outcomes worldwide. The speakers will cover a range of topics from how satellites are being used to predict infectious disease outbreaks to the use of behavioral economics and media sources to improve health interventions and outcomes. Speakers include John Haynes from NASA, Sarah Baird and Silvio Waisbord from George Washington University, and Hugh Bruck from the University of Maryland.

UNRAVELING VASCULAR INFLAMMATION

“From Immunology to Imaging” Conference

October 24–25, 2016

Day 1: 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; Day 2: 9:00–11:40 a.m.

Natcher Conference Center (Building 45)

To register: http://bit.ly/2bTfbt8

For questions: Contact Nehal Mehta at nehal.mehta@nih.gov

This conference is the first of its kind to focus on vascular-inflammation emerging research as it relates to immunology, systemic inflammation, and multimodal imaging. The event will bring together the world’s most renowned experts the field, providing a forum for international collaboration across disciplines to speed new discoveries, fill gaps in existing knowledge, and potentially lead to critical breakthroughs in ways to understand vascular inflammation as it relates to future cardiovascular disease events. Fast-paced presentations and discussions will facilitate the exchange of ideas on critical topics, including translational studies involving cardiovascular imagery and quantification and the immunology of inflammation. A poster session will enable the evaluation and discussion of additional unpublished research and guidance to early-career researchers.