Research Announcements

OnPAR to Provide Second Chance for Rejected NIH Proposals

The Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR) was conceived to re-accelerate the biomedical research and development enterprise by seeking a larger return on NIH’s peer review investment on research proposals evaluated in the top 30% in each NIH Institute and Center.

The goal of OnPAR is to match quality biomedical research projects with priority areas of interest of private foundations, and pharmaceutical and biotech companies and/or other private biomedical research funders. OnPAR will eventually provide access to a global pipeline of research projects that can either supplement internal projects or provide innovative new ideas for future medical products.

OnPAR FAQs
Register for OnPAR

Leidos has worked with NIH Program Officers to inform applicant Principal Investigators that have scored well, but below the Institute/Center payline, about OnPAR. If an applicant scored in the top 30% and is not funded by NIH, he/she is welcome to submit an abstract for consideration. Qualified applicants are invited to register with OnPAR and participate in the submission and review process described below. It is not necessary to re-write an application. OnPAR will accept the NIH abstract that was submitted by the applicant, and if invited, his/her submitted NIH application and Summary Statement.

Central Plains Federal Statistical Research Data Center Announces New Website Access

The new Central Plains FSRDC (CPFSRDC) web page is now up and available for researchers to access. CPFSRDC is the first federal statistical research data center to serve the central plains region with point a point of access to restricted-use versions of important datasets maintained by the US Census Bureau and other federal agencies. The center hosts a secure computing lab where qualified researchers with approved projects can conduct research using restricted-use microdata.

The URL is: http://rdc.unl.edu
Researchers can click on the Data tab to get information about all of the data sets available. They can also click on the Guidelines tab to get information on how to proceed with project approval and access to the RDC. Please make this information available to your research communities and direct them to our Census Administrator Veronica Roth (veronica.l.roth@census.gov) for individual consultations on getting started.

We are also available to give presentations to interested groups of researchers at your institutions. contact Veronica Roth if you would like to arrange a presentation.

NIH-Sponsored, Training Workshop on Metabolomics at the University of Alabama, Birmingham

Workshop Dates:  July 17 – 21, 2016

Travel Funds Application Deadline:  April 29th, 2016

While many are familiar with genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, each representing methods to globally examine gene sequences and how they are transcribed and translated, the current NIH initiative is to comprehensively study all the metabolites that circulate in our bodies. We’ve all worried about blood glucose and cholesterol levels, but now we want to extend this to all the compounds that circulate through our bodies and hence get a better handle on management of acute and chronic disease as well as the aging process.

The NIH, through the Common Fund (http://commonfund.nih.gov/metabolomics/index), sponsors a hands-on training workshop at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (July 17-21, 2016) in the design, sample collection, sample and data processing and data analysis that is associated with metabolomics research. I’m the director of the workshop and strongly encourage your interested members to apply.

Information about the workshop and how to apply can be found at:

http://www.uab.edu/proteomics/metabolomics/workshop/workshop_july_2016.php

Note that there are travel funds for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The application deadline is Friday, April 29, 2016.

Contact Stephen Barnes (205-934-6944; sbarnes@uab.edu)  or Lynn Waddell (205-934-4579; mammadu@uab.edu) if you have any questions.