JULY 2022

NEWSLETTER

The Center for Advanced Research Training & Innovation (CARTI) newsletter lists upcoming events, resources, services and grant deadlines for UMB research faculty and fellows.  To register for CARTI's upcoming events, click HERE.

Passano Foundation Clinician-Investigator Award for

Career Development Information Session

Wednesday, July 20

9:00 – 10:00am

Zoom

This information session will provide potential candidates with an overview of the Passano Foundation Clinician-Investigator Award for Career Development at the UMSOM, including tips for applying. This award was created to provide partial salary and fringe benefits for clinician-investigators in the early stages of their faculty appointment (full-time appointment as instructor or assistant professor in a clinical department). The purpose of this award is to help protect the research time and thereby further the acquisition of expertise and preliminary results for qualified young UMSOM faculty clinician-investigators while they apply for external career development grant support. The deadline for Internal submission of applications for this award is October 3, 2022. Read the guidelines for more information on this award.

Speaker: Curt Civin, MD, UMSOM Associate Dean for Research and Director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine will give an overview, followed by informal Q & A. 

Getting to Know the New NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy

Thursday, September 15

1:00 – 2:00pm

Zoom

This seminar is an overview of the new NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy (NIH DMSP), coming into effect January 2023. All grant applications submitted under the policy will require a data management and sharing plan. The goal of this seminar is to prepare participants to meet these new requirements. Participants will learn what the NIH DMSP entails and how it differs from the existing policy, as well as tips and resources for preparing data management plans.

Speakers: Amy Yarnell, Data Services Librarian and Jean-Paul Courneya, Bioinformationist; Health Sciences and Human Services Library, Center for Data and Bioinformation Services (CDABS), UMB

Clinical & Translational Research Training

Introduction to Clinical and Translational Research at UMB & Baltimore VA

August 1-5, 2022

9:00 – 3:15pm (Monday – Thursday)*

9:00 – 2:00pm (Friday) 

*ending times vary

LOCATION: HSFII Auditorium, 20 Penn Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

The Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UMSOM is pleased to sponsor the 21^st annual “Introduction to Clinical and Translational Research at UMB & Baltimore VA” course.

This course is open to all UMB and Baltimore VA faculty, fellows, residents, students and staff with an interest in clinical and translational research. This course is designed for new researchers, or those looking for a refresher, who struggle with designing good studies and/or writing publishable manuscripts/grants. 

The course is free of charge and only open to those affiliated with the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and Baltimore VA.

CREDITS: To receive academic/graduate school credit, students already enrolled in a UMB graduate school program should register for PREV 616 in the 2022 fall semester. To register for PREV 616 in the fall, contact your graduate program office. Anyone who is interested in registering for PREV616 in the fall, MUST contact Dr. Kristen Stafford to discuss eligibility prior to registering. Dr. Stafford’s email is [email protected]

CME credits and other continuing medical education credits will not be offered for this one-week course.  

COURSE AGENDA: 

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/k30/Summer-Course-Introduction-to-Clinical-and-Translational-Research-at-UMB--Baltimore-VA/

COURSE DIRECTORS:

• Jennifer Albrecht, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UMSOM 

• John Sorkin, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Chief, Biostatistics and Informatics, UMSOM 

• Kristen Stafford, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UMSOM

QUESTIONS: Contact Stacie Mendoza at [email protected]

This course is jointly sponsored by:

• University of Maryland Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (UM-OAIC)
• Baltimore VA Medical Center, Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers (GRECC)
• Center for Advanced Research Training & Innovation, UMSOM (CARTI)

Registration is required

This is an in-person course

Scholarly Writing Accountability Group (SWAG) Program

Virtual Program to Help Faculty Increase Their Scholarly Writing Productivity

The Center for Advanced Research Training & Innovation (CARTI) provides a virtual peer accountability/support program designed to increase writing productivity among UMB early stage faculty called Scholarly Writing Accountability Group (SWAG). A description of our virtual SWAG program follows, including details on how to participate.

What is a VIRTUAL SWAG?

A virtual SWAG is an active peer-led writing group for UMB junior faculty that meets for 1-hour, once a week over a 10-week period using Microsoft Teams. Groups follow a structured agenda including 15 minutes of updates and goal-setting followed by 30 minutes of individual writing and then 15 minutes of reporting and wrap-up. Each group is limited to 4-8 members who must commit to attending at least 8 out of the 10 weekly sessions. In a SWAG, there is no peer review of writing; SWAGs focus on the process of writing, not the content. The purpose of SWAG is to help junior faculty get in the habit of 1) writing in short blocks of time daily or almost every day and 2) identifying and prioritizing feasible writing goals.

Writing accountability groups are being used at multiple major medical schools. The data which have been reported on the results of this program are very favorable, reflecting marked increases in the quantity and quality of writing by junior faculty participants.

What are the Benefits of Joining a SWAG?

Faculty who join SWAG will:

• Develop new writing habits to achieve writing goals
• Improved time management skills
• Gain a greater sense of control over the writing process
•  Build a small community of support/social network

Registration

New SWAGs at UMB are being formed on a rolling basis. If you’re interested in participating, please submit the following REQUEST FORM.

Questions? Email Stacie Mendoza

CARTI'S Seminar Slides & Recordings

CARTI'S Individual Consultations

CARTI'S Mini LIbrary

UMB Graduate School

 Graduate Certificate in Scientific and Medical Entrepreneurship

UMB’s Graduate Certificate in Scientific and Medical Entrepreneurship

As researchers, understanding how to create valuable intellectual property (IP) and move it into commercial application is vital. The Graduate Certificate in Scientific and Medical Entrepreneurship is a 12-credit online program designed to do just that, in as little as 9 months. This four-course certificate provides a deep-dive into the licensing of IP as a means to forming a new business, the ways that a venture can be funded, and the various paths to growth and success. 

Whether you’re interested in pursuing innovation-based career path or pivoting into the world of tech transfer, this program could be ideal for you. Perhaps you’re committed to better understanding the challenges of commercializing licensed IP so you can better advise others?

This program is eligible for tuition remission and the $75.00 application fee is waived for USM employees.

The deadline to apply for fall admission is August 1.

Start your application today!

Questions?: Contact Neil Davis, program director or Sean Brooks, recruiter.

Health Sciences & Human Services Library (HSHSL)

Center for Data and Bioinformation Services (CDABS)

It's not too late to register to Learn R this summer with CDABS!

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library - Center for Data and Bioinformation Services (CDABS) will be holding an R workshop every Thursday in July starting July 7th. All sessions run from 12:00pm to 3:00pm and meet online. Space is limited so register now!

R is an open-source programming language that is ideal for working with statistics and data. Here at CDABS, we love R for many reasons: It’s free, flexible, and friendly! It’s also a great tool for creating reproducible data analyses and visualizations.

In this series we’ll start with the basics of R and the RStudio environment, move to more complex data wrangling and visualization tasks, and finally look at the extended R ecosystem and tools for sharing your work with interactive reports, notebooks, and applications. Sign up for the whole series, or just the sessions that interest you most, but be advised that the later sessions will require at least a little familiarity with R.

See full session descriptions below and register here:

July 7: Introduction to R and RStudio

This session will provide a solid foundation in working with R and RStudio and lay the groundwork to enable participants to explore more advanced topics in R programming. No experience with R or programming is required.

Topics covered will include:

• Navigating the RStudio interface, installing packages, getting help
• Naming and working with objects
• Using functions
• Identifying R data types and structures
• Working with scripts

July 14: Data Wrangling with R — Introduction to the Tidyverse

This session will introduce the concept of “tidy” data, and the versatile collection of packages known as the Tidyverse. Participants will get hands-on experience wrangling real datasets.

Topics covered include:

• Loading data from external files
•  Subsetting data
• Transforming data from wide to long
•  Working with dates
• Joining multiple datasets

Prerequisites: Session one in this series, or have previous experience with base R.

July 21: Data Visualization in R with ggplot2

Learn how to use the ggplot2, a robust Tidyverse package used to create high quality graphics for exploring and communicating your data. We will go beyond basic graphs and learn how to customize and annotate our graphs for more effective storytelling. Participants will have the best experience if they attended session two in this series or have some previous experience with R and the Tidyverse.

Topics covered include:

• Visualization best practices
• Grammar of graphics – ggplot2 layers, aesthetics, and geoms
• Choosing an effective graph type for your data
• Customizing labels, axes, legends, and more
• Choosing a color palette and themes

Prerequisites: Session two in this series, or have previous experience with R.

July 28: Introduction to Reproducible Research and Interactive Data Applications in R

This session will provide a high-level overview of the vast ecosystem in R for reproducible research and creating interactive data visualizations. Users will learn about version control, packages available in R for creating reports, online books, and even blogs. There will also be an introduction to creating data applications/ dynamic dashboards using the Shiny package in R. Participants will have the best experience if they have some familiarity with R syntax and the RStudio interface.

Topics covered will include:

• Version control with Git
• Integrating RStudio and GitHub for project data and code management and version control.
• Reproducible research reports with code and prose with RMarkdown
• Sharing your work on the web with Bookdown/Blogdown
• Interact, analyze, and communicate your data with Shiny

Prerequisites: Session one in this series, or have previous experience with R.

Questions? Contact Amy Yarnell, data services librarian and Jean-Paul Courneya, bioinformationist at [email protected].

More information is available at CDABS's blog

NIH COVID-19 Related Updates & Funding

Funding Opportunities

SEARLE SCHOLARS PROGRAM

(limited Submission)

The Searle Scholars Program makes grants to selected universities and research centers to support the independent research of exceptional young faculty in the biomedical sciences. The award provides $300,000 over 3 years to support the research program of each Scholar, including up to 25% of the Scholar’s salary.

Approximately 15 Searle Scholars Program grants will be awarded in 2023, to begin on July 1st, 2023. The application deadline for the 2023 award cycle is September 30th, 2022.

The SOM has been invited to nominate one (1) faculty member for the Searle Scholars Program, with the following qualifications:

·        The nominee must be pursuing independent basic-science (or a combination of basic and clinical) research in an area of chemistry, medicine or the biological sciences,

·        Appointed to the rank of full-time Assistant Professor, on or after July 1, 2021, and

·        Appointed to their first tenure-track position (dual appointments are still eligible).

The Office of Research Affairs (ORA) will be conducting an internal competition to select the SOM nominee for this award. Faculty who wish to be considered for the nomination should submit the following items to [email protected] by ORA's internal competition deadline of Friday, July 15th, 2022:

·        Full CV, clearly indicating the exact date of appointment as Assistant Professor.

·        A 2-page (maximum) description of research interests and goals.

ORA will review the materials from interested candidates and the selected nominee will be notified by August 1st.

Details for the Searle Scholars Program can be found HERE. 

ARNOLD & MABEL BECKMAN FOUNDATION

Beckman Young Investigator Program

The Beckman Young Investigator Program provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open up new avenues of research in science.

LOI DEADLINE: August 1, 2022

APPLICATION DEADLINE: January 16, 2023

FINALIST INTERVIEWS: April 25-26, 2023

Visit the WEBSITE for more details.

MCKNIGHT BRAIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION & AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR AGING RESEARCH

Innovator Awards in Cognitive Aging and Memory Loss

Awards will be available for advanced Assistant Professors and recently appointed Associate Professors in support of studies focusing on clinical translational research and understanding basic biological mechanisms underlying cognitive aging and age-related memory loss.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: August 1, 2022

Visit the WEBSITE for more details.

University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC)

UMMC Innovation Challenge

The University of Maryland Medical Center Innovation Challenge is a competition hosted by Dr. Bert O'Malley and UMMC senior leadership. The Innovation Challenge was launched in March 2021 with the goal of capturing new ideas and concepts, and to harness innovative spirit at the UMMC Downtown and Midtown campuses.

The Innovation Challenge is open to anyone to apply, the only requirement being that one member of the team be employed at UMMC.

Six awards will be given for up to $125K in seed funding to teams with at least one UMMC team member.

Intent to Apply due: August 5, 2022

Full Application due: September 2, 2022

Visit the WEBSITE for more details.

Questions? Email: [email protected]

NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY

Biostatistics/Informatics Junior Faculty Award

The goal of this award is to create protected time for a junior faculty member to collaborate with an established multiple sclerosis research group to develop expertise in clinical trials, real-world evidence, epidemiology, data mining, and/or other related bioinformatics research.

PRE-APPLICATION DEADLINE: August 10, 2022

APPLICATION DEADLINE: August 17, 2022

Visit the WEBSITE for more details.

UMB, INSTITUTE FOR CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH (ICTR)

Special Call for Applications for Two Funding Opportunities Focused on the Physiology, Pathophysiology and/or Treatment of Nephrotic Syndrome (NSRP)

This program will provide starter funds for projects specifically focused on innovative, translational research applications that address issues of prime concern directly relevant to Nephrotic Syndrome (NS). NS is a manifestation of kidney diseases caused by increased glomerular permeability and defined by massive proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, and edema. The disorder may be caused by a disease specific to the kidneys (primary cause) or secondary to a systemic disorder such as diabetes, lupus, infections, or genetic disorders. NS can affect children and adults of all ages and is often associated with various complications such as hyperlipidemia, thromboembolism, increased risk of infection and in some cases end stage renal failure.  We invite applicants from Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Nursing, Law, Social Work, and Graduate School, UMBC, and UMCP.

This Request for Proposals will provide the following:

·        Two-Year Pilot Grant Award: Up to $65,000 in direct cost for 2 year (December 1, 2022 – November 30, 2024) for innovative, translational research applications that timely address prominent issues directly relevant to Nephrotic Syndrome (NS).

·        KL2 Mentored Career Development Award: This award is for academic year 2023-2024. The purpose of the KL2 is to provide support for clinical and translational research training and career development of persons in relevant disciplines and professions from six of the professional schools on the UMB campus (Dentistry, Law, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work) as well as from the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) for innovative, translational research applications that timely address prominent issues directly relevant to Nephrotic Syndrome (NS).

To be considered for these program opportunities, all proposals must be submitted electronically through the ICTR website by 5 PM EST September 2, 2022. 

You can access the application and find out more information regarding this funding opportunity by visiting the NSRP Funding Announcement - University of Maryland, Baltimore (umaryland.edu).

Questions? Contact [email protected]. 

PASSANO FOUNDATION

Clinician-Investigator Awards for Career Development

The purpose of these Passano Clinician-Investigator Awards is to help protect the research time, and thereby further the acquisition of experience and preliminary results for qualified young UMSOM faculty clinician-investigators during the time that they are applying for external career development grant support.

DEADLINE: Proposals must be submitted by October 3, 2022.

Guidelines regarding this opportunity can be found HERE.

Questions? Contact Marey Shriver, PhD at [email protected] 

Please note: An Information session will be held on Wednesday, July 20th at 9am via Zoom. Click HERE to register.

Seeking Foundation Funding for your Research?

The SOM’s Office of Development, Corporate and Foundation Relations, provide services and resources to assist UMSOM faculty with identifying private foundation funding for research, programs, educational initiative, and community outreach at the local, regional, and national level. Visit their website for more information and to schedule an appointment. 

Additional funding opportunities can be found at:

 UMSOM Internal Funding Opportunities & External Funding Databases

UMGCCC Funding Database

(Cancer related research)

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