We are constantly seeking new ways to foster the development of a diverse and inclusive biomedical research workforce. One notable example is our partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to support a series of workshops on increasing diversity in chemistry departments. The workshops focused on disability equity, racial and ethnic equity and gender equity. The organizing committees and workshop participants, mostly chemistry department chairs, felt that progress was made during each workshop. However, the insights and good intentions engendered by such meetings can have an all too high vapor pressure and gains can be lost. Enter OXIDE. OXIDE, which stands for the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity, is a 5-year grant effort co-funded by NIGMS, NSF and DOE to address multiple areas of diversity, including gender, race-ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation. With the desire to keep the momentum gained from the previous workshops, OXIDE seeks to maintain a connection among the chairs of chemistry departments and partner with social scientists to take advantage of their findings. OXIDE’s recurring National Diversity Equity Workshops facilitate discussion among these groups on the latest diversity research and its implications for chemistry departments. The next workshop, which is open primarily to chairs or thought leaders of the leading research-active chemistry departments, will be held April 15-16, 2013, in Arlington, Virginia. Presentation slides will be archived on the Oxide Web site. OXIDE also partners with the American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News to conduct and publish annual faculty demographic assessments of more than 75 research-active chemistry departments, allowing for longitudinal examination of data trends. Perhaps most importantly, OXIDE embodies the commitment of the chemistry community, NIGMS and other federal agencies to advancing diversity and inclusion. Its approaches—and findings—might be useful to other scientific communities.

A goal of our Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity (TWD) is to create a community of trainers and educators dedicated to developing a well-prepared, diverse biomedical research workforce. Toward that end, the focus of this year’s TWD Program Directors’ Meeting (link no longer available) is on networking. The meeting, to be held on June 12-14 in Chicago, will address the value of sustained networking among the grantees, students and other communities served by these programs. The meeting will enable program directors to learn more about other TWD programs; establish connections with potential new partners, especially regional “neighbors”; and collectively address the Institute’s research training objectives. Plenary sessions and keynote talks will cover the diversity of the U.S. research workforce, STEM training in the context of NIH-funded biomedical and behavioral research, and innovative approaches for evaluating and assessing our training programs. NIGMS and NIH leaders will give overviews of the Institute's training strategic plan and the implementation of the report from the Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the Director, NIH. The meeting is primarily intended for program directors and associate deans (or the equivalent) at institutions with these TWD student and predoctoral training programs: Bridges to the Baccalaureate, Bridges to the Doctorate, IMSD, IRACDA, MARC T36, MARC U-STAR, RISE, PREP, NIGMS T32 predoctoral programs and IDeA INBRE. Online registration is open now at www.TWDNIGMS.org (no longer available) and closes May 10, 2013.

The report of the Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the Director, NIH, includes recommendations that could have a broad impact on NIGMS training programs. NIH has just issued a request for information (RFI) on implementing the working group’s recommendations. As summarized in a blog post by NIH’s Sally Rockey, the RFI seeks your input on these topics:

• Developing individual development plans (IDPs) for those in graduate and postdoctoral training supported by NIH funds from any source,
• The length of time NIH should provide support for graduate students,
• Providing more uniform benefits packages for postdocs,
• Gathering information about individuals receiving NIH support for their training,
• Reporting by institutions of aggregate career outcomes of graduate students and postdocs on a public Web site,
• Considering multiple career outcomes as indicators of success when reviewing training grants, and
• Launching a dialogue with the extramural biomedical research community to assess how NIH supports the biomedical community, including faculty salaries.

I strongly encourage you and your colleagues to submit comments by the April 22 deadline, because your input is key to developing policies that serve the scientific community and improve the training experience of graduate students and postdocs.

To maximize utilization of the vast amounts of biomedical data and information that are being amassed, NIH has started to develop a series of activities grouped under its Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative. One of the efforts focuses on ways to train the workforce needed to manage, access, integrate and analyze large, complex datasets. As a first step toward developing a set of recommendations, a BD2K working group has issued a request for information (RFI) on the short- and long-term training needs of individuals who work with biomedical data. The group is also seeking examples of programs or strategies to cross-train scientists at all career levels as well as comments on evaluating workforce skills and knowledge and developing a diverse research workforce. Your input, which should be submitted by March 15, 2013, will inform discussions during an upcoming BD2K planning workshop on training and education needs.

As the new deputy director of the Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity, my main focus is on the Institute’s training activities. It is an exciting time to join the Institute and help implement its strategic plan for biomedical and behavioral research training. One of my first tasks after coming to NIGMS was to work with Institute staff and leadership to address a key action item in the strategic plan to “examine and adjust the allocation of NIGMS training resources across and within scientific areas and institutions.” Since NIGMS supports about half of the predoctoral institutional training program (T32) positions funded by NIH, our policies have a broad impact. The Institute has always looked at a number of issues in addition to priority scores to identify which training programs to support and works to allocate funds on a fair, equitable and well-justified basis. Following extensive analyses and discussions of the current distribution of training resources, which began well before my arrival, we intend to be more proactive in aligning our funding decisions with our priorities. Some of the additional factors we will consider are whether programs:

• address training in new and emerging areas of science,
• have been highly successful in enhancing diversity,
• have effectively leveraged slots to impact the overall institutional program,
• are at institutions that do not currently receive NIGMS T32 support, and/or
• explore models for training that are fundamentally different from our existing programs.

The realignment process will take place over the next several years and, in some cases, may gradually impact the size of existing training grants. We anticipate that this more goal-driven approach to funding will make the overall impact of our training programs even stronger, and in this way, further enhance the quality of biomedical research training. I welcome your comments on this blog or directly to me at alison.hall@nih.gov.

NIH offers a wide variety of career development (K) awards, and NIGMS participates in a number of them. Here are answers to questions we often get about NIGMS support of these awards. Which career development awards (K awards) does NIGMS support? We support:

• Mentored Clinical Career Development Awards (K08, K23) in clinical research areas funded by NIGMS, which include anesthesiology, clinical pharmacology, sepsis, innate immunity and inflammation, and trauma and burn injury.
• Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Awards (K25) for quantitatively trained investigators who make a commitment to basic or clinical biomedical, bioengineering, bioimaging or behavioral research that is relevant to the NIGMS mission.
• Pathway to Independence Awards (K99/R00) for promising postdoctoral scientists to receive both mentored and independent research support in areas relevant to NIGMS.
• Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Awards (IRACDA) (K12) that combine a traditional mentored postdoctoral research experience at a research intensive institution with an opportunity to develop academic skills, including teaching, at partner institutions with a demonstrated commitment to students from groups underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research.

I’ve found a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for a K award. How can I tell if NIGMS participates in this FOA? If NIGMS is participating, it will be listed in the “Components of Participating Organizations” section near the top of the FOA. If NIGMS is not participating, consider whether another listed component may be appropriate for your application. Where can I learn more about NIGMS-supported K awards? Visit our Mentored Career Development Awards page to find additional information about most of our K awards. You also can contact an NIGMS program director in your area of interest. Where can I find information on all NIH K awards? You can find information on these awards at the K Kiosk. Another NIH resource, the Career Award Wizard, can help you identify the K awards that may be right for you.

Our Strategic Plan for Biomedical and Behavioral Research Training stresses the importance of creating an individual development plan (IDP) for every graduate student and postdoctoral scholar, not just those supported on formal training grants. The plan’s implementation blueprint addresses this action item, and we’ve since posted more information and links to sample IDPs. The latest addition to this IDP page is a new tool developed by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science called myIDP. The tool makes it easy for grad students and postdocs to examine their scientific skills, interests and values; identify scientific career paths that best match their skills and interests; and set goals for the coming year. The site also links to articles for early career scientists to use as they plan their future. I encourage mentors and mentees alike to check out this great new resource.

As I discussed in an earlier post, the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program supports the development of infrastructure and capacity to enable investigators in IDeA-eligible states to become more competitive for NIH and other biomedical research funding opportunities. While the program has led to significant progress in the basic sciences, clinical and translational research in IDeA states has, for the most part, remained underdeveloped. To spur greater clinical and translational research in these states, NIH issued the IDeA Program Infrastructure for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) funding opportunity announcement last year. We have just awarded the first grants, to the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (lead institution: West Virginia University) and the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center (lead institution: Louisiana State University Pennington Biomedical Research Center). Among the activities these centers will pursue are partnerships and collaborations within and across IDeA states; clinical and translational pilot grants; clinical research education, mentoring and career development; clinical research design, epidemiology and biostatistics; and projects related to the specific health and research needs of their states. For more information on the IDeA-CTR initiative, please contact me by e-mail or call 301-435-0832.

Last week, the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of NIH released two reports that are very relevant to the NIGMS missions of supporting research training and promoting a diverse biomedical workforce. The reports, produced by working groups with impressive membership rosters, have many elements in common with our training strategic plan. For example, the report from the Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group suggests that institutions provide graduate students with experiences to better prepare them for various career options, recommends testing ways to shorten the Ph.D. training period, and calls for individual development plans for postdocs regardless of the NIH grant mechanism that supports them. The report from the Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce affirms the importance of a diverse biomedical workforce and NIH’s role in helping to achieve it. NIH’s Sally Rockey, who co-chaired one of the working groups, has a blog post on these ACD reports, plus an additional report on large biomedical research datasets. We look forward to working with other parts of NIH to advance our shared commitment to training and diversity.

A national effort called PULSE (Partnership for Undergraduate Life Science Education) is under way to transform undergraduate biology education at the departmental level. Along with the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, we will select 40 “Vision and Change Leadership Fellows” to devise prototypic solutions that facilitate the systemic changes outlined in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action. These efforts will inform future investments by NSF, HHMI and NIGMS. We expect fellows to be departmental chairs, former chairs, deans or faculty members at equivalent levels who demonstrate a passion for undergraduate biology education, concern for its future and a desire to act at the local and national levels. Other qualifications include:

• Awareness of the history and current thinking about undergraduate life science education reform.
• Undergraduate teaching experience as well as experience mentoring, motivating and evaluating other faculty.
• Active involvement in cultivating the mix of scholarship in teaching and life science research at their type of institution.

As fellows, their activities will include:

• Proposing thoughtful and creative approaches to implementing recommendations of the Vision and Change report.
• Engaging in open exchange and assessment of ideas.

If you’re interested in applying, go to http://PULSEcommunity.org for complete details, including a video, sample application, FAQs and more. The application deadline is July 9, 2012. For more information, e-mail me or Shiva Singh, in the Training, Workforce Development and Diversity Division.