Of Assays and Surveys: Tools to Inform Decision-Making
At the NIH we make decisions at all levels that profoundly affect the organization’s mission and the conduct of science here. We need to have input from all our NIH workforce to make informed decisions. One of the ways to obtain such input is through surveys.
New Scientific Director for NIMHD: Anna María Nápoles, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Nápoles Is NIH’s First Latina Scientific Director
Anna María Nápoles, who was a professor and behavioral epidemiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, was recently appointed scientific director for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Lucy R. Forrest (NINDS); Laura Beane Freeman (NCI-DCEG); Michail S. Lionakis (NIAID); Antonina Roll-Mecak (NINDS); and Justin W. Taraska (NHLBI, pictured)
NIH’s Toolkit for Enhancing Scientific Workforce Diversity helps NIH institutes and centers identify, recruit, and advance scientists from underrepresented groups; fabricators moved to the Office of Research Facilities and continue to provide custom instrumentation, equipment design, fabrication, and modification services; the Biomedical Translational Research Information System is a resource that brings together clinical research data from the Clinical Center and other NIH institutes and centers.
Read about NIH advances: abnormalities in the brain’s processing of glucose linked to Alzheimer disease; infectious prion protein found in skin of patients with CJD; hibernating squirrels may provide clues for new stroke treatments; cases of unexplained anaphylaxis linked to red-meat allergy; and more.
Being a trainee can be tough at times. We need to be able to balance an overwhelming number of tasks including lab meetings, research, writing, keeping up to date with the literature, mentoring, teaching, and attending conferences. While we all know that time for fitness and wellbeing should be prioritized, they are often the first to fall by the wayside when time is limited.
As a postbaccalaureate researcher at NIH, I work with big data. I’m also a writer in my spare time. Last fall, I attended a writers conference and discovered data journalism, which allows me to combine my interests in big data and writing. Data journalism involves the finding, collecting, and analyzing of data to create compelling news stories.
NEWS FROM AND ABOUT THE SCIENTIFIC INTEREST GROUPS
NIH’s Free Radical Interest Group and the interagency and university consortium the Oxygen Club of Greater Washington, D.C., work to bring together individuals from a wide range of fields who are interested in understanding the roles that free radicals and other reactive oxygen and nitrogen species play in basic physiology, disease mechanisms, and treatment strategies.
