In September, we hosted a virtual meeting for investigators and students supported by the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program to introduce them to strategic initiatives from NIH leaders in response to COVID-19, and to highlight scientific progress by IDeA researchers. We were pleased with the overwhelming response from the IDeA community—there were approximately 750 attendees and more than 180 abstracts submitted.

Highlights of the meeting included presentations by:

• NIH Associate Deputy Director Tara Schwetz, who gave an overview of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative and the opportunities it provides to accelerate research, development, and implementation of point-of-care and scale-up testing for the COVID-19 pandemic across the country.
• NIGMS Director Jon Lorsch, who provided information about the IDeA Program Infrastructure for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) COVID-19 registry, a consortium that deposits COVID-19 patient data from rural and underrepresented populations into the national database that is available to researchers.
• Division for Research Capacity Building Director Ming Lei, who provided updates on new initiatives in IDeA programs and shared the Division’s recently created IDeA interactive portfolio dashboard that provides information on current awards and the inventory of active IDeA-supported cores and facilities. Dr. Lei also discussed initiatives that promote and support intra-IDeA and trans-NIH collaborations, including administrative supplements to enhance collaborations and expand research and research capabilities in the IDeA states.

Eighteen IDeA investigators presented their COVID-19 and non-COVID research or proposals. The meeting videocast, abstract book, and the scientific presentations given by those who agreed to share their talks are available on the IDeA webpage.