Equity and Diversity in the NIH Intramural Research Program
BY MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, DDIR, AND GISELA STORZ, CHAIR, NIH EQUITY COMMITTEE
How can equity and diversity in the NIH intramural research program continue to be improved? The NIH Equity Committee, established in November 2017, is helping to address this question and has come up with several recommendations.
Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Lorenzo Leggio (NIAAA and NIDA), Frank Maldarelli (NCI-CCR), Aleksandra Urszula Nita-Lazar (NIAID), Lorna Role (NINDS), and Edwina H. Yeung (NICHD, pictured).
Read about discoveries made by NIH intramural researchers: how a protein uses filaments to bridge broken DNA; how workplace exposure to chemotherapy drugs is associated with an increased risk of miscarriage and genetic toxicity; the benefits of flavonoids; controlling cervical cancer; new chemogenetics technology for modulating brain function; the important role that rest may play in learning; and making progress toward Epstein-Barr virus vaccine.
Fellows can now get peer-to-peer training on the latest scientific topics and techniques. Since 2017, Ruth Chia (then a research fellow and now a staff scientist) and Adamantios Mamais (visiting fellow) at the National Institute on Aging have been organizing seminars in which fellows teach fellows topics ranging from managing big data to conducting machine learning in genetics.
The world’s most powerful MRI scanner was delivered to NIH in March and installed in the NIH Clinical Center (Building 10). The 11.7-Tesla magnet, weighing 51 tons, was built in Italy, journeyed across the ocean by cargo ship to Baltimore, and then transported by tractor-trailer truck to NIH.
