The Research Board of Directors (RBOD), Medical School leadership, and the Medical School Office of Research are always actively listening to research faculty and staff with the ultimate goal of increasing the pace and success of biomedical research at the University of Michigan.

At the Research Town Hall on Wednesday, November 5, Senior Associate Dean for Research Steven L. Kunkel, Ph.D., offered a brief outline of how the entire research enterprise has been acting on faculty and staff feedback by pushing forward the elements of the Strategic Research Initiative.

Bolstering infrastructure and scientific enablers is a key "fast forward" strategy of the Strategic Research Initiative, and great strides have been made in the past year. Click on the links below to explore these areas further, or CLICK HERE to view the video of the Research Town Hall where milestones were discussed in further detail.

• Host Microbiome Initiative
• Protein Folding Diseases Initiative
• Fast Forward Medical Innovation
• R01 Bootcamp
• Data Warehouse
• Central Biorepository
• Epigenomics Core 

In addition to these significant areas of progress and investment, Dean Kunkel also announced the start of another major fast forward strategy - transforming the clinical trial enterprise.

Earlier this year, a Clinical Trials Task Force was convened by the RBOD and charged with mapping out a strategy for system-wide improvements to clinical trials research here at the U-M Medical School and Health System. Members of the Clinical Trials Task Force are:

• David Pinsky, Co-Chair
• Robert Neumar, Co-Chair               
• John Carpenter
• John Carethers
• Reed Dunnick
• Ed Hurvitz
• Steve Kunkel
• Ted Lawrence
• Paul Lee
• Karin Muraszko
• Mack Ruffin
• Tom Shanley
• Max Wicha 

After several months of fact-finding and planning, last month the RBOD officially approved and provided a multi-million dollar funding budget for the Task Force's strategic and tactical recommendations. Between now and January 2018, the entire research enterprise will engage in overhauling clinical trials, including: 

• Enhancing infrastructure by unifying policies and developing common standards, tools, and metrics
• Mandatory training and professionalization of the Study Coordinator role
• Streamlining regulatory review and contracting
• Developing and deploying a clinical trial management system
• Enhanced and efficient identification of research participants and active trials
• Revise promotion, tenure, and compensation to acknowledge importance and value of clinical trial activities
• Identify space within or near clinics to fully integrate the clinical and research experience for patients

Other changes will include work toward building a collaborative, federated system of thematic and flexible operational nodes, where local clinical trial management will occur and be executed. All investigators will have access to these nodes for support for their clinical trial portfolio. The nodes will be responsible to the RBOD Clinical Trial Subcommittee and will provide ongoing performance metrics.

The Research Town Hall video contains a more detailed outline of the recommendations of the Clinical Trials Task Force.

As in past years, the Biomedical Research Core Facilities will have special holiday hours to allow staff members to use their University Season Days. The holiday hours for the Cores are now available online.

The U-M Medical School (UMMS) Office of Research is pleased to welcome Jill Jividen, who will serve as Senior Manager of Research Development Support, to the UMMS Office of Research team.

In this role, Jill will lead and develop educational training programs in grant proposal development for the UMMS research community, including conducting proposal writing workshops and overseeing the Mentored Research Academy: R01 Boot Camp program, now in its second year.

She will also develop new programs and resources to assist faculty with successfully securing funding from various sponsors, as well as work to connect investigators to existing proposal development and funding resources.

Jill has been with the University of Michigan for more than four years, most recently as the Program Director for Faculty Research Development at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Previous stints at both the UMMS and the School of Information have allowed Jill to hone her skills in grants administration, particularly in proposal development for a broad range of both federal and private sponsors.

Her experience includes extensive opportunities to advise faculty in funding opportunities, proposal processes, award administration, and career development. Jill earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina in 2008.

Please join us in welcoming Jill to the UMMS Office of Research!

Medicine at Michigan is seeking news of books authored or edited by Medical School faculty - or guest editorship of a full journal issue - for the "In Print" section of the magazine's next issue.

Please send publication information, including title, co-authors/editors, publisher and publication date, to Lauren Crawford at lmcrawfo@umich.edu by Wednesday, November 26 for inclusion in the upcoming issue.

If possible, please also send a high-resolution image of the cover or forward the book or journal to Lauren Crawford at the UMHS Office of Development, 1000 Oakbrook, Suite 100, Ann Arbor, 48104-6815.

If a physical copy is submitted, the cover will be scanned to print specifications. Please also indicate if you would like your items returned after scanning.

The Medical School Office of Faculty Affairs & Faculty Development has recently launched a new website:

faculty.medicine.umich.edu.

The website offers many new features, including:

• New searchable mentor matrix by expertise domain
• Workshops and events are now searchable by topic
  and displayed on a calendar
• New appointment process information by track
• A responsive design that works on your desktop,
  tablet, and smartphone

Please contact Laura Denton at dentonl@umich.edu with any questions or suggestions on the new site.

Every day, researchers and administrators at the university receive invitations to contribute to journals. Many of these solicitations are from publishers of Open Access (OA) Journals.

While there are many reputable OA journals, there are also a growing number of so-called "predatory journals" - those that exist solely for the purpose of generating revenue rather than further scholarship. Since OA journals utilize a different funding model than traditional subscription-based journals, working with them can involve a learning curve.

The University Library has a newly updated and useful Research Guide explaining Open Access. Contents include: factors that influence a researcher's choice of publications options, considering one's funding source, funding amounts, and the issues of securing tenure or promotion, and tips on how to find reputable journals in which to publish your work.

The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) has admitted a group of students who will be ready to start working on research projects during the winter semester.

We need lab, clinical, and public health projects for these students. If you could use help collecting pilot data or with your current research project, please fill out the short online application by mid-November.

This will give students time to contact you so that you can schedule interviews and make your decision before winter break. You can also provide background material so students will be ready to start working the week of January 5th.

UROP is not a match program. Instead, UROP provides a list of approved projects, and interested students contact the researcher directly. You decide who you want to interview and who you want to offer the position to.

Supplemental funding of $500 - $1000 per project is available for student research-related costs.

Questions?

Contact Katy Downs, UROP Assistant Director, at (734) 615-9000 or downs@umich.edu. Additional program details can also be found on the UROP website.

During his keynote address to open the 2014 MCubed Symposium, President Mark S. Schlissel said he will work with faculty to develop strategies that will allow the university to fully take advantage of the excellence spread among its schools, colleges, institutes and other academic centers.

"In other words, how do we make our strength greater than the sum of our many excellent parts?" he asked.

As a first step, President Schlissel announced he would convene a panel of distinguished U-M faculty members to focus on the biological sciences. The President's Advisory Panel on the Biosciences will develop a research and education strategy that leverages the university's strengths in the life sciences.

The 17-member panel is chaired by Provost Martha E. Pollack and includes leading faculty members across a range of disciplines from biology, chemistry and psychology to the neurosciences, math, and biomedical engineering.

The official charge to the panel reads, in part, "The overarching challenge is how to develop and then implement a life sciences research and education strategy that reaches across the entire enterprise, permeabilizes the barriers that exist between departments and schools, and allows us to make synergistic investments in faculty, students, and infrastructure that enhance the excellence and impact of research at the university. Put simply: How do we make the whole greater than the sum of its parts?"

The panel will begin its work immediately with an interim report due to the president by February 1, 2015. A final set of recommendations will be due by the end of the 2015 winter semester. 

On Monday night, Dean James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., honored a select group of Medical School faculty with induction into the League of Research Excellence. Since 2011, the League of Research Excellence has celebrated the phenomenal success of the U-M Medical School's elite research faculty.

The faculty selected this year for the League of Research Excellence are those that have demonstrated research excellence in all or one of the following areas: collaborations and team science, publications, seminal discoveries, entrepreneurial endeavors, and national/international prominence in his/her field.

Adding 49 faculty scientists and physicians to the League, the entire Medical School community is inspired and proud of the accomplishments of this stellar group, and immensely appreciative of the quality and quantity of their work.

Click here to view the complete list of 2014 League inductees. 

At the recent annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Chicago, U-M Medical School Dean James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., who has led the school since 2007, accepted the Flexner Award in recognition of outstanding leadership in transforming medical education in the modern age. 

Considered the highest honor given by AAMC, the Flexner Award recognizes extraordinary contributions to medical schools and the medical education community, and was first given in 1958. 

In nominating Dean Woolliscroft for the honor, George Thibault, M.D., president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, wrote, "He has been consistently ahead of his time and often prophetic about the trends in medical education."  

Read more about Dean Woolliscroft's nomination.  

Click on the image above to read more about each faculty member's research.

University of Michigan experts in genetic and statistical analysis, Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS), head and neck cancer, health policy and nursing are among the new members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

Gonçalo Abecasis, Carol Bradford, Eva Feldman, Mark Fendrick, Susan Murphy, and Kathleen Potempa were elected to the IOM in recognition of their major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health. With their election, the U-M now has 59 past and present members of the IOM.