EVENTS 
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Thursday, March 10
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Room G550,
School of Dentistry
Friday, March 11 -
Tuesday, April 12
Four-week course
Room 6000,
Taubman Health
Sciences Library
Marcia Hatch:
Start-Up Will FaceThursday, March 17 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Room 5000, Taubman Health
Sciences Library Wednesday, March 23 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM BSRB Seminar Rooms (breakfast provided)
Thursday, March 31 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Cure Room (5050), Brehm Tower Tuesday, April 5 - Thursday, April 7 Various locations Ann Arbor Marriott Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest Wednesday, April 27 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Founders Room, Alumni Center Abstract submissions due by Friday, March 11. Please contact Kerry Ryan with any questions. Additional details available here.
Metabolomics WorkshopMonday, May 9 - Thursday, May 12 Four-day workshop 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM Kellogg Eye Center If you have any questions about the workshop please contact Terri Ridenour. Tuesday, May 10 Forum Hall, Palmer Commons This event is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, May 17 BSRB Seminar Rooms
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RESEARCH NEWS
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QUICKLINKS
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IN THIS ISSUE
Leadership
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Funding
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Training & Professional Development
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Policies
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Announcements
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Select Research Funding &
Award Opportunities
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External Limited Submissions
Bridging Support
Featured Foundation Grants
Visit the UMHS Corporate and Foundation Relations website for more foundation funding opportunities.
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The Path to Sustained Excellence
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An Animal Care & Use Program Event
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Recent months have seen changes across the entire spectrum of animal research at the University of Michigan. From requirements for sterile gloves to how facilities are managed to new members added to our veterinary leadership team, we have been working to strengthen the program at every level.
There is still more work to be done, and your active engagement remains crucial. After introductory remarks by President Mark Schlissel, Vice President for Research Jack Hu will address what it means for our entire community to support long-term, sustained excellence in animal care and use at the University of Michigan.
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Monday, March 14
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Kahn Auditorium, BSRB
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A live, interactive WEBCAST is also available. CLICK HERE
to learn how to log in remotely.
Please note: Valid U-M ID required to attend this event in person or via webcast.
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Fast Forward Clinical Trials Update
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The Clinical Trials Subcommittee has announced a call for a Letter of Intent to Develop a Clinical Trial Node. This call is intended to inform the Clinical Trials Subcommittee of the level and breadth of interest by faculty in establishing a future Clinical Trial Node and help inform the final call for proposals in late March.
DOWNLOAD the Letter of Intent Submission Form (note: clicking on the link will start an automatic download of the submission form)
The Clinical Trials Subcommittee will be working closely with interested faculty to facilitate collaborations to ensure the remaining areas of clinical trial activity are included, and to optimize the total number of nodes. An information meeting is scheduled:
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Monday, March 21
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Dow Auditorium, Towsley Center
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All interested faculty and staff are encouraged to attend this meeting. CLICK HERE for more details and DOWNLOAD the list of areas that should be captured by the next round of nodes, or ultimately incorporated into the existing nodes.
For more information about Fast Forward Clinical Trials, including an archive of past updates, CLICK HERE.
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Two RFPs Issued for MIDAS Challenge Thrust Awards
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Learn more at upcoming town hall meetings
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White papers describing project goals and teaming arrangements are due Monday, May 16.
Interested researchers can learn more about these two MIDAS Challenge Thrust areas and connect with potential collaborators at these upcoming town hall meetings:
Health Science Meeting:
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Wednesday, March 30
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Henderson Room,
Michigan League
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Social Science Meetings:
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Thursday, March 10
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
East Room
Pierpoint Commons
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Thursday, March 31
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
East Room
Pierpoint Commons
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Next Cubing Event in March!
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Cubes still available for Medical School faculty
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While many of you have already secured cubes, others may not have acted yet.
There is still time to form a multi-unit team and request a classic cube (worth $60K)
or mini-cube (worth $15K)!
The next opportunity to request a cube will occur in mid-to-late March, with more details coming soon. Learn more about MCubed 2.0. And don't miss the information about perks for cubes that address sustainability topics or themes of the University of Michigan's Bicentennial!
Questions?
for more information.
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UMMS Office of Research
Announces Limited Submission Funding Opportunity
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Internal applications due Friday, April 15
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 The U-M Medical School (UMMS)
The Pathway to Stop Diabetes program supports creative scientists who are starting their careers in diabetes research, or who are already established in another field but want to expand their focus to diabetes research.
Award Details
| Internal Deadline: | Friday, April 15 by 11:59 PM EST | | Funding Available: | $1.6M over 5-7 years | | Institutional Nominees Allowed: | One | | Eligibility Requirements: | Details here | | Sponsor Deadline: | Friday, July 1 by 5:00 PM EST |
To Apply for the Internal Competition For consideration as an institutional nominee for this award, please visit UMMS Competition Space for guidelines and application requirements. This funding opportunity will be listed under the Limited Submissions category.
If you have any questions, please contact Laura Hessler via email or phone at (734) 615-6575. |
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New Features, Upgrades
Coming Soon to Michigan Experts
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| | Click on the image above to view a screenshot of the new platform's network mapping functionality. |
Michigan Experts, a searchable database of more than 4,700 faculty members across disciplines at the University of Michigan, will soon undergo a platform upgrade.
The new upgrade will:
- Increase the capabilities
of the site and - Add functionality, such as the ability to upload publications from other select databases.
More information, including training opportunities to review the new platform, will be announced in the coming months.
Since its launch five years ago, the Michigan Experts database has continued to expand in both its reach and functionality.
A small sampling of the many schools, centers, and institutes represented on the database includes:
- Medical School
- Schools of: Kinesiology, Dentistry, Engineering,
Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health - College of Literature, Science and the Arts
- Cancer Center
- Samuel and Jean Frankel Cardiovascular Center
- U-M Dearborn
- Various campus institutes and many more!
How to Use
Michigan Experts can be used to find researchers for collaboration or mentoring, exploring co-author networks, and for connecting with colleagues across the preeminent U-M research enterprise.
The database can be searched by concept, individual name, or "free text" excerpt (such as an abstract or RFA).
Each faculty member has an individualized profile page that enables them to showcase their distinctive expertise to the global research community by providing a rich representation of their:
- Publications (updated on a weekly basis through
the Scopus database) - Grants, e.g. externally-funded sponsored projects
obtained while at U-M - Patents (obtained through the U-M Office of Technology Transfer while at U-M)
The database, powered by Elsevier, is managed by the Medical School's Office of Research and Medical School Information Services.
If you would like to know more, or have any questions about how Michigan Experts can be used to expand your research network, email us at experts-help@umich.edu.
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An End to
Autoclaving Biohazardous Waste!
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Over the past year, a cross-functional Medical School project team focused on improving research services has evaluated methods to reduce the time
and effort required by laboratory staff to handle and process the biohazardous waste generated in labs.
The group has met with lab staff, lab managers, faculty, and administrators to develop a new approach for the Medical School to dispose of biohazardous waste.
Waste that will be included in this program consists of:
- Solid Biohazardous Waste - Examples include plastic pipettes, syringes without needles, petri dishes, culture flasks, biohazardous animal bedding, and gloves.
NOTE: Pathological waste, sharps, or other hazardous waste (i.e., ethidium bromide gels) will NOT be included
in this program and must be disposed through the appropriate methods as outlined by the Department of Occupational Safety and Environmental Health (OSEH).
Moving forward, biohazardous waste will be collected in the same biohazard bags that are currently used in the laboratory, and will be transferred to a drop-off site by lab staff where the bags will be placed into designated bins rather than an autoclave. The bins will be routinely collected for proper disposal by an outside vendor at no additional charge to labs.
Read on to learn what the changes mean to your lab.
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AAHRPP Visits in Three Weeks!
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Here's what you need to know
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 AAHRPP will visit the U-M campus Wednesday, March 30 - Friday, April 1.
U-M has been accredited since 2008, re-accredited in 2011, and is scheduled for a re-accreditation visit beginning Wednesday, March 30. Accreditation bolsters the University's reputation as a leader in human subjects research. Research sponsors and other research partners increasingly consider AAHRPP accreditation before pursuing collaborations, or providing funding, for research.
Action Items AAHRPP site visitors will interview select researchers, research staff, and research administrators from the U-M units engaged in human subjects research.
If you have been selected for an interview, join us for a Q&A preparation session on Monday, March 21 at 4:00 PM in NCRC Building 520, Room 1122.
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For more information and preparation resources,
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Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center Launches Pilot Grant Program
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Proposals due Friday, April 1
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Proposals that help to bridge the gap between the growing clinical food allergy disease and the mechanisms that mediate disease progression will be favored.
| Award Amount: | Up to $50K per year* | |
Number of
Potential Awardees:
| Up to three | |
Deadline:
| Friday, April 1 | |
Eligibility Requirements:
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Details here
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*Investigators can seek a competitive renewal for a second year of funding
Questions about the Food Allergy Center should be directed to Michele Pushies at mpushies@umich.edu or (734) 647-8153.
Specific questions about how to submit an application through UMMS Competition Space should be directed to Laura Hessler at lauralh@umich.edu or (734) 615-6575. |
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Featured Foundation Grants
for Biomedical Research
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Alliance for Lupus and
Pfizer's Centers for Therapeutic Innovation Research Challenge Grants
The Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR) has partnered with Pfizer's Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) to facilitate and accelerate development of new therapies for lupus patients. Through this joint funding for lupus research, grant funds have been designated for the studies of high scientific merit and translational potential focused on the role of interferon-beta (IFN-β) in the pathogenesis and/or maintenance of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
*Award amount can be up to $150K per year for a maximum of two years.
The second year of funding is dependent upon successful completion of Year One milestones, as well as an agreement from the ALR-CTI Joint Steering Committee.
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics, Inc.
Clinical Research Awards
Projects may address diagnostic or therapeutic methods related to CF or the pathophysiology of CF, and applicants must demonstrate access to a sufficient number of CF patients from CF Foundation-accredited care centers and to appropriate controls.
Up to $150,000 per year for a maximum of three years may be requested for single-center clinical research grants. For multi-center clinical research, the potential award is up to $350,000 per year for a maximum of three years.
*Plus up to 8% indirect costs
Free to Breathe 2016 Metastasis Research Grant
to Prevent or Stop Lung Cancer
Free to Breathe recently announced the opening of their 2016 Metastasis Research Grant competition. Now in its second year, the Metastasis Research Grant funds projects that focus on preventing or stopping lung cancer metastasis. These awards support high-impact, innovative lung cancer research within this area of emphasis that will result in clinical translation (e.g., clinical trial) by the end of the 3-year award period.
For the 2016 program, Free to Breathe expects to support two awards up to $600,000 each, paid over three years.
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Award
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Amount
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Deadline
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$600K
| Friday, April 22
by 5:00 PM EST |
Questions about these award opportunities should be directed to Joe Piffaretti in UMHS Corporate and Foundation Relations via email at piffaret@med.umich.edu or phone at (734) 763-1318.
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HIPAA-Aligned High Performance Computing Cluster Now Available
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U-M researchers who manage and analyze large volumes of data protected under the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA) now
have access to a new secure computing tool: the HIPAA-aligned "Armis" high performance computing cluster.
Armis operates in tandem with the HIPAA-aligned Turbo Research Storage service, providing a comprehensive high performance computing and storage platform.
"Armis will allow researchers in fields from medicine and public health to the biological and social sciences, to draw on powerful high performance computing tools while adhering to the requirements of HIPAA," said Eric Michielssen, Associate Vice President - Advanced Research Computing. "It opens new opportunities for faculty and students, and boosts interdisciplinary research engendered by the Data Science Initiative."
Armis, available to all researchers on campus, is operated by Advanced Research Computing - Technology Services. Armis is accessed and used in essentially the same way as the Flux HPC cluster. Armis users have access to the same software as Flux users, including statistical packages like Stata, R, and SAS.
"Armis will prove immensely useful to healthcare researchers working with sensitive patient information. As we try to fulfill the promise of big data in medicine and turn precision medicine from an idea into a reality, we need to analyze large volumes of diverse data types," says Sachin Kheterpal, Senior Director of the U-M Medical School Research Data Warehouse.
For information on sensitive data restrictions, including the use of Armis, see the Armis page on the Safe Computing website.
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U-M Team Receives $9.2M NIH Grant
to Study C. Difficile
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U-M researchers have launched a $9.2 million assault against C. difficile, sometimes pronounced "see-diff" for short. They're doing it thanks to a new grant from the National Institutes of Health -- part of the U.S. government's $1.2 billion effort for a multi-agency attack on antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The work will build on earlier achievements of the Medical School's Host Microbiome Initiative, part of the Strategic Research Initiative and a Fast Forward program, led by Harry Mobley, chairman of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Thomas Schmidt, director of the Center for Microbial Systems, and Vincent Young from the Department of Internal Medicine/Infectious Diseases division.
CLICK HERE to read the full announcement, or visit the Host Microbiome Initiative website to learn more about their research.
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EMERSE Search Engine Accesses 'Untapped Data' in EHR Clinician Notes
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More than 12 billion words. That's how much text is locked in the "free text" portion of electronic medical records at UMHS. And the standard way to access those words is to look through the medical records individually.
That is, unless you use EMERSE.
Initially released in 2005 (and with development ongoing), EMERSE provides easy access to data that was previously untapped. David Hanauer, M.D., M.S., was interested in using search engines for clinical data and wanted a way for researchers to access the free text notes. "This was just untouched," he says. "Here was the majority of the valuable information that was basically just this black hole that nobody could use." He originally developed it as a tool for researchers in the Cancer Center, but opened it up for use by other researchers and U-M units.
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Sharpening Your Focus:
Tips on Grant Proposal Preparation
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By Jill Jividen, Ph.D., Senior Manager
for Research Development Support,
U-M Medical School Office of Research
(One in a series of tips published in UMMS Research News about writing proposals.)
In January, editors of leading medical journals proposed a significant change to scientific publication -- to require researchers to publicly share the data gathered in clinical trial studies as a condition of publishing results in these journals. The move is much in line with a growing consensus of sponsors, including foundations and government agencies, who increasingly mandate data sharing in this field of research.
Currently, investigators can publish findings without releasing the data upon which conclusions are based, and only a few of the top journals have tried to require data sharing as a condition of publication. Now, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) claims that there is "an ethical obligation to responsibly share data generated by interventional clinical trials because participants have put themselves at risk." Sharing data, they argue, augments scientific integrity and facilitates scientific progress, allowing others to provide insight and analyses. The shift to data sharing is not without controversy. Researchers often justify their decisions to keep data close by pointing to how much time, effort, and money is spent in gathering and analyzing (their data). They can publish at their own pace, and exposing their data feels risky -- what if someone finds an error? On the other hand, keeping data inaccessible can protect the work from scrutiny but may impede science.
Widespread, responsible data sharing will change how clinical trials are planned and conducted, and how data are used. Full details of the ICMJE proposal are available here.
ICMJE is accepting public comment on their proposal until Monday, April 18. CLICK HERE to share your opinion.
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