Volume 14, Number 11: May 7, 2008
FEDERAL NEWS
NIH RFI Solicits Ideas for Roadmap Strategic Initiatives
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking input from the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public about innovative and cross-cutting initiatives to be funded through the NIH Roadmap. Collecting these ideas is an initial step in the process of identifying a new cohort of Roadmap programs for Fiscal Year 2011. This Request for Information (RFI) provides an opportunity for respondents to submit their own ideas. The NIH expects to spend $30–50 million per year from within the currently projected Roadmap budget for new five-year initiatives.
This RFI invites ideas on ways to:
- Address specific barriers to basic, translational, or clinical research through development of novel tools, technologies, services, or other means.
- Fill specific knowledge gaps that impede research across a broad spectrum of health science.
Interested persons, groups, and organizations are invited to submit ideas which identify a health research problem and describe a proposal to resolve it. Responses will be accepted through Friday, June 2, 2008 at roadmap_ideas@nih.gov.
NSF Broader Impacts Criterion
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published a Dear Colleague letter on the broader impacts criterion and how it should be addressed in grant proposals. Writing for the NSF, Luis Echegoyen, Director of the Division of Chemistry, emphasized the importance of the criterion, covered the proposal sections which required addressing it, and offered representative activities (pdf) from the Grant Proposal Guide.
Jeffery Brainerd, who covers federal research funding for the Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote a News Blog post about the letter.
NIH Updates and Expands FAQs on Financial Conflicts of Interest
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research has posted updated and expanded Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) related to financial conflicts of interest for researchers and institutions.
NEH Announces High-Performance Computing Program
The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced a joint program with the Department of Energy (DOE), the Humanities High Performance Computing Initiative. These grants provide computer time on DOE machines at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as training and support to help scholars take full advantage of those resources.
An April 22 Chronicle of Higher Education article has additional details about the program.
NSF Program on Improvement in Undergrad Biology Education
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has developed a new track in the Research Coordination Networks Program in Biological Sciences focusing specifically on undergraduate education in biology.
NIH eSubmission News
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research has announced that NIH will hold off transitioning from PureEdge to Adobe forms until the end of the calendar year when as many pending form changes can be combined as possible. Prior to the transition, NIH will pilot the use of Adobe forms with a few specific Funding Opportunity Announcements.
Additionally, the transition of the Career Development (K), Fellowship (F), and Training (T) programs to electronic submission will not take place until after the move to Adobe forms, in February 2009 at the earliest.