Announcements

FOR A LISTING OF OTHER EVENTS AT NIH

Go to: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/events

MANAGEMENT INTERN PROGRAM UNLOCKS NEW CAREER PATHS

Have you heard of the NIH Management Intern (MI) Program? It is a highly competitive, two-year career development program for current NIH employees. MIs come from a variety of job backgrounds, including both scientific and administrative fields. Recent MIs have joined the program from positions as diverse as intramural program specialist, police officer, contract specialist, high-voltage electrician, and extramural support assistant. MIs rotate through different administrative career fields to gain invaluable insight into the NIH while contributing to the work of NIH through targeted assignments and challenging projects. After two years and upon completion of the program, MIs transition into an administrative-management career in one of many areas throughout NIH.

The NIH Management Intern Program vacancy announcement will be posted in USAJobs March 1– 11, 2022 under the title of Management Intern. To learn more about the program or to view a recording of a recent MI Information session click here.

The NIH Training Center in the Office of Human Resources is pleased to announce the Management Intern (MI) Program job vacancy announcement, opening March 1-11, 2022: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/639653900. Current GS-7 through GS-12 NIH employees are invited to apply.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

MASTERS OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES (MPS) IN DATA SCIENCE FELLOWSHIP

The newly formed Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (CARD) at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is offering a unique, research-intensive master’s level fellowship program to build a diverse and inclusive community in biomedical data science and train healthcare researchers to grow their data science skills. The goal of this program is to cultivate the next generation of data science and bioinformatics professionals at CARD. Through this new collaborative fellowship, qualified candidates will receive a remunerated full-time position to work at CARD while completing coursework to earn a paid Masters of Professional Studies (MPS) in Data Science from the University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMBC). Fellowship awardees will gain foundational knowledge in data analysis and data management through collaborative instruction and research performed at CARD with experts in the field of Alzheimer’s and related dementia research.

This fellowship is a two-year program administered across three cohorts in partnership with the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at NIH (FAES) and UMBC. It is a 30-credit hour professional graduate degree with a mandated minimum GPA of 3.0. Qualified Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellows can take specified FAES Data Science and Bioinformatics courses and transfer up to 15 credits toward completion of the UMBC MPS in Data Science. All courses will be taught by highly experienced data science professionals. Beyond their coursework, as members of the research team, fellows have the opportunity to utilize and refine new skills working on a broad range of exciting projects with real data curated at CARD. The fellowship will cover costs of the MPS degree (except for books) including a paid stipend while working at CARD.

Do not miss this unique opportunity to develop a career and earn an MPS in Data Science!

NIH PAIN CENTER RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM

  • “Tackling Pain at the National Institutes of Health: Updates From the Bench, the Clinic, and the New NIH Pain Research Center”
  • March 31–April 1, 2022
  • To register (and for more details) click here.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Division of Intramural Research is convening a 2-day symposium to learn from and discuss with key stakeholders across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) the current state and future directions of the intramural pain research program and to highlight current collaborations and discuss future research within the Pain Research Center (PRC). Attendees will hear from NIH Institute, Center, and Office (ICO) leadership and clinical and basic researchers across NIH and will learn about ongoing projects and collaborations that are underway in the PRC.

The PRC, with support from the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) Director’s Challenge Award, various NIH ICOs, the Clinical Center, and other contributors and collaborators, serves as a hub for clinical pain research, creating and continuing to develop a pain phenotyping platform to better characterize and understand mechanisms of diverse pain states, and to further develop and test therapies to better manage or prevent the development of chronic pain and opioid abuse.

This meeting is NIH-only. Please register with your NIH email address.

12TH ANNUAL WOMEN SCIENTISTS ADVISORS SCHOLARS SYMPOSIUM

The 12th Annual Women Scientists Advisors (WSA) Scholars Symposium will be presented by Sally Chang (NHGRI), Ching Wen Chang (NCI), and Shachar Abudi (NIGMS). Sally Chang is a fellow in the lab of Andy Baxevanis who is Director of Computational Biology. Ching Wen Chang is a fellow in the lab of Xin Wang, Deputy Chief of the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis, and Shachar Abudi is an M.D./Ph.D. student in the lab of William Gahl, Senior Investigator, Medical Genetics Branch. The presenters were selected as WSA Scholars from among the women who were Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) awardees in 2021, in recognition of their outstanding research achievements. Sally Chang’s talk is titled “Patterns of human disease gene evolution and their implications for model organism selection”; Ching Wen Chang’s talk is titled “Tid1 Ablation Disrupts Mitochondria and Drives Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma Progression”; Shachar Abudi’s talk is titled “Systemic Hps1 gene augmentation prevents pulmonary manifestations in a mouse model of Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome.” This symposium highlights the research accomplishments of women fellows in the NIH Intramural Research Program.

CLINICAL CENTER GRAND ROUNDS

March 9: “From Anemia to Iron Overload and Infection: Pathobiology Of Iron;” Elizabeta Nemeth (David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA)

March 16: “Twenty-one Years after Anthrax: What Clinical Questions Remain?”; Mary Wright (NIAID)

March 23: “Gene therapy approaches for multiple rare diseases: The PaVe-GT and BGTC initiatives”; Philip J. Brooks (NCATS), Donald C. Lo (NCATS)

March 30: “Lymphocytes as a ‘Living Drug for the Treatment of Cancer’ and Emergence of the NIH cGMP Program to Support Patient Care Innovation”; Anna Lau (Department of Laboratory Medicine, Clinical Center), Steven A. Rosenberg (NCI)

For information on other lectures, please check the website.

IMMUNOLOGY INTEREST GROUP SEMINAR SERIES

March 9: “Seq-ing answers to COVID-19”; Catherine Blish (Stanford)

March 16: “X-chromosome Inactivation in immune cells: Understanding the female-bias of SLE disease”; Montserrat Anguerra (University of Pennsylvania)

March 23: “Controlling a Hierarchy of Kinases Involved in TCR Ligand Discrimination”; Arthur Weiss (University of California, San Francisco)

March 30: “Integrin cues for lymphocyte trafficking and differentiation: facts and puzzles”; Ronen Alon (Weizmann Institute)

April 6: “Metabolic regulation of T cells in infection and cancer”; Susan Kaech (Salk)

April 13: “Adaptive responses to SARS CoV2 and its variants in natural infection and vaccination”; Alessandro Sette (La Jolla Allergy Institute)

April 20: “Thymus Generation and Regeneration”; Graham Anderson (University of Birmingham)

April 27: “Mechanisms of pathogenesis revealed by a humanized model of COVID-19”; Richard Flavell (Yale)

May 4: “Myeloid Cell Heterogeneity”; Florent Ginhoux (STAR)

See website for the rest of the schedule.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE (NLM) HISTORY TALKS

The NLM History of Medicine Division sponsors talk to promote awareness and use of NLM and related 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 recognize the diversity of its collections—which span ten centuries, encompass a range of digital and physical formats, and originate from nearly every part of the globe—and to foreground the voices of people of color, women, and individuals of a variety of cultural and disciplinary backgrounds who value these collections and use them to advance their research, teaching, and learning.

Thursday, March 17, 2022: George Deacon and the Circulation of Homeopathic Therapies in Peru (1880-1915); Patricia Palma (University of Tarapacá, Arica, Chile)

Thursday, April 28, 2022: The Measure of Black (Un)Fitness: Legacies of Slavery in the Early Eugenics Movement; Rana A. Hogarth (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Thursday, May 5, 2022: 6th Annual Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine: A Laboratory of Humanitarianism: Military and Civilian Captivity during the First World War; Matthew Stibbe (Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom, and 2019 NLM Michael E. DeBakey Fellow)

 Thursday, June 23, 2022: Merleau-Ponty, Descartes, and the Meaning of Painting; William D. Adams (Former Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Former President, Colby College)

CAN A CONTROVERSIAL TREE HELP END THE OPIOID CRISIS?

  • Virtual Lecture, NCCIH Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series
  • Monday, April 25, 2022, 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET
  • On NIH VideoCast and NCCIH Facebook
  • Webpage for more information: click here

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) presents the first of three lectures for spring 2022 in its Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series.

Christopher R. McCurdy, Ph.D., is the Frank A. Duckworth Eminent Scholar Chair in Drug Research and Development; a professor of medicinal chemistry; and the director of the Translational Drug Development Core, at the University of Florida. His research focuses on the design, synthesis, and development of drugs to treat pain and drug abuse. Much of his work has been in discovery chemistry with opioid receptors, NPFF receptors, and sigma receptors. Dr. McCurdy is also an internationally recognized expert on the kratom plant. He holds a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Georgia.

Summary: Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa Korth) is a tree in the coffee family indigenous to Southeast Asia. Its leaves are the source of a Thai traditional drug, kratom, with unique pharmacologic actions—e.g., both stimulant and depressant actions. Kratom has been used traditionally in Southeast Asia as an opioid substitute and in Thailand as a treatment for addiction. Little was known scientifically, however, about this tree and drug.

In the past few years, more study results and human case reports have started to appear in the literature, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency announced an intention to place kratom into Schedule I. Dr. McCurdy will discuss the traditional medicinal use of kratom, examples of current pharmacologic studies, and results of his team’s behavioral studies in rodent models. The potential of kratom and its major alkaloid (mitragynine) in the context of opioid withdrawal is the primary focus. Kratom’s differing uses, availability, and preparation around the world will also be explored.

To request sign language interpreting services or other reasonable accommodations to participate, contact the NCCIH Clearinghouse at info@nccih.nih.gov or 1-888-644-6226 by Monday, April 18.

This lecture is the first in the spring 2022 season of the Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series. Information on the next two lectures (May 2022 and June 2022) will be posted soon. The series provides overviews of the current state of research and practice involving complementary health approaches and explores perspectives on the emerging discipline of integrative medicine.

  • Wednesday, May 18, 2022 (1:00–2:00 p.m.): Michelle Y. Martin, Ph.D. (University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center
  • Thursday, June 23: (12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.). Elissa Epel, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco)

NIH DIRECTOR’S SEMINAR SERIES (2021–2022)

  • Fridays at noon
  • Seminars will be videocast on videocast.nih.gov

March 11: Niki Moutsopoulos (NIDCR), “Mucosal Immunity at the oral barrier: from bedside to bench”

April 15: Pamela Guerrerio (NIAID), “Role of TGFbeta in the pathogenesis of allergic diseases”

May 6: Kandice Tanner (NCI-CCR), “Microenvironment regulation of metastasis”

June 17: Zayd Khaliq (NINDS), “Inhibitory circuit control of dopamine neuron subpopulations”

July 15: Vincent Munster (NIAID), “The ecology of emerging coronaviruses, from host reservoir to disease”

2021-2022 WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON LECTURES

The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series(WALS) is the highest-profile lecture program at the NIH. All WALS talks will be held remote-only via NIH Videocast until further notice. Lectures will be archived.

Lectures originally scheduled for March 2, 9, and 16 have been postponed to the fall.

March 22, 2022: Tiny Technologies and Medicine: From Hepatic Tissue Engineering to Cancer Nanotechnology; Sangeeta Bhatia (Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT)

March 30: Leveraging the Intramural Research Program to Effect Foundational Progress in Neurodegenerative Disease; G. Burroughs Mider Lecture; Andrew Singleton (National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging)

April 6: Imaging Inflammation Resolution and Wound Repair; Anna Huttenlocher (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

April 13: POSTPONED TILL FALL — Neurobiology of the World’s Most Dangerous Animal; NIH Director’s Lecture; Leslie Vosshall (The Rockefeller Institute)

April 20: Organoids to Model Human Disease; Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute)

April 27: In Vitro Approaches to Investigate Cell Division and Biological Size Control; Rebecca Heald, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley)

May 4: Toward Personalizing HIV Treatment and Prevention; Rolla E. Dyer Lecture; Namandje Bumpus (John Hopkins Medicine)

May 11: Mechanisms of Activation of the EGF Receptor; John Kuriyan (University of California, Berkeley)

Lectures continue through June; check website for details.

2022 DEMYSTIFYING MEDICINE

The NIH- and FAES-sponsored course “Demystifying Medicine” is designed to excite the interest of Ph.D. and M.D. students, fellows, researchers, and others in bridging the gap between amazing advances in basic science and the challenges of clinical disease. There are no formal requirements to attend as many of the weekly sessions as desired. The format involves a translational physician, a basic scientist, and usually a live patient who puts a human face on the disease.

March 1: Nick Lane (UCL-UK), Jennifer Lippincott Schwartz (HHMI), “Origin of Life: Viewed by Evolutionary Biologist and Cell Biologist”

March 8: Nora Volkow (NIDA), “Brain Development in Adolescents and Addiction Risks”; Branda Curtis (NIDA), “Stigma in Addiction Treatment”

March 15: Neal Young, “Somatic Mutations in ‘Benign’ Diseases”; Peter Grayson “Somatic Mutations in Rheumatologic Diseases: VEXAS and Beyond”

March 22 (starts at 3:00 p.m.): Special Tuesday Lecture for WALS; Sangeeta Bhatia (MIT), “Tiny Technologies and Medicine: From Hepatic Tissue Engineering to Cancer Nanotechnology”

March 29: Walter Koroshetz (NINDS), Joshua Gordon (NIMH), “Chronic COVID: Neurologic and Mental Effects”

April 5: Lyuba Varticovski (NCI), Alan Decherney (NICHD), “Endocrine Disrupters and Fertility”

April 12: John Mather (NASA), “Seeing Biology and Physics in Space”

April 19: Evelina Federenko (MIT), Nadia Biassou (CC), “How Minds and Brain Create Language”

April 26: Brigitte Widemann (NCI) and Jack Shern (NCI), “Neurofibromatosis Type 1 Tumors: Natural History to Precision Therapy”

May 3: Former NIH Director Francis Collins, “The Role of NIH in Science and Health: Quo Vadis”

This page was last updated on Tuesday, May 17, 2022

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