In this edition:

(Scroll down for more info and click on the links for additional details)

Funding Opportunities

• NEW Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research
• Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award
• Support for Early Career Investigators
• Innovation Award to Catalyze Military-Connected Research
• MGH Screening Technologies in Primary Care Innovation Fund
• Limited Submission Funding
• Foundation Funding Opportunities

Announcements:

• NEW MGB Postdoctoral Salary Update
• Participate in the 2024 Research Risk Assessment
• Nominate a Scientific Superstar
• HIV/AGING Internship
• Health Equity Data & Delivery Science Certificate Program

Events:

• Clinical Research Council
• Parenting Series, The Crucial C’s & Family Meetings
• Biobank Portal
• Introduction to RPDR
• Nancy J. Tarbell, MD Faculty Development Lecture Series
• NEW Town Hall for Strategic & Agile Decision-Making Work Group 
• REDCap Getting Started 
• NEW Catalyst CTSA Grant Opportunity 
• Introduction to Bioinformatics
• NEW 2024 HDDC Spring Symposium
• NEW 2024 Anne Klibanski Visiting Lecture Series 07
• Helen Gurley Brown Presidential Summit on Women and Science
• NEW Annual NORCH Symposium
• NEW Cognitive Interviewing
• NEW Speed Mentoring Hour
• NEW RCR Program: Managing Conflicts of Interest
• NEW MGH Ode to Joy: A celebration of the arts
• NEW Faculty Transition Webinar Series Session 5
• Fourth Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry
• 10th Annual World Medical Innovation Forum
• Cambridge Science Festival
• 4th Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry
• Two Meditation Sessions available every week

NEW Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research

What are they?

"For nearly three decades, Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation has provided significant financial support to some incredibly promising physician scientists, who are applying novel and state-of-the-art techniques to address fundamental problems in the genesis and treatment of blood related cancers. Since 1996, the Foundation has committed more than $43 million in grants to over 330 junior faculty members at the nation’s leading institutions. These grants continue to be a sign of excellence and represent support for many of the most exciting new scientific ideas in blood cancer research.”

MGH is eligible to nominate a maximum of two candidates - one in the mainstream/conventional medical research category and one in the integrative medical research category.

How much is the award?

The award will be for three-year period at $75,000.00 per year (including 10% IDC), contingent on the submission of acceptable annual progress reports.

Deadline

MGH internal pre-proposal: Monday, June 10, 2024 at 5:00pm

Full application to sponsor: Friday, August 16, 2024

Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award

Harrington Discovery Institute (HDI) invites you to submit an LOI for the 2024 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award. The award offers successful applicants multiple opportunities for funding in addition to expertise from pharma-experienced leaders with a track record of bringing drugs to market. Intellectual property rights are retained by the award recipient or their institution.

Up to 12 Scholar-Innovators will be selected to receive:

• $100,000 guaranteed grant award;
• Drug and business development support from Harrington’s Therapeutics Development Center advisors; 
• Opportunity to compete for acceleration funds up to $300,000;
• Opportunity to qualify for investment funds typically up to $2MM; 

Letters of Intent (LOI) Due: June 5, 2024

Support for Early Career Investigators at the Translational and Clinical Research Center

The TCRC at Massachusetts General Hospital will support two early career investigators each year to perform their pilot and feasibility studies or studies related to their early career awards on the TCRC.

Awardees will not be charged for nursing, nutrition, or sample processing time, the TCRC annual fee or the TCRC per visit fee for research conducted on the TCRC (for up to $10,000 per year for two years). Coordinator support will not be available through this program.

Awardees will be supported via consultation with the TCRC Medical Resource Officer in protocol development, building of budgets, grant writing, filing of INDs/IDEs, and study implementation. They will receive guidance regarding participant recruitment and retention in the study, and other support as necessary for successful completion of the proposed project. Awardees will be encouraged to participate in Catalyst supported resources such as the C/T Academy and the GRASP program.

Deadline for Submission: July 1st

FY 2025 Innovation Award to Catalyze Military-Connected Research

Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Program, is providing catalyst funding to be used toward innovative, military-focused research. The purpose of this funding is to stimulate new ideas and exciting approaches to research designed to yield meaningful impact for Veterans, Active-Duty Service Members and Military-Connected Families. 

We plan to provide 2 grants of $75,000 each, inclusive of 20% indirect costs. The project period for your proposal can be either 1 year or 2 years. To be eligible to apply, the Principal investigator(s) must hold an MGB faculty appointment in any department.  

The application deadline is Friday May 31, 2024 at 5:00 pm. 

MGH Screening Technologies in Primary Care Innovation Fund



There is great promise for the development of new technologies to detect disease or disease risk factors at an earlier stage in the primary care setting. However, innovative screening technologies are frequently difficult to get off the ground due to challenges conducting research in the primary care setting and difficulties translating and commercializing technologies that need to be implemented in a cost-effective manner and on a large scale.

Award: One pilot grant will be funded for one year at $50,000 (direct costs) + 20% (indirect).

Due date for proposals: May 31, 2024

Limited Submission Funding Opportunities

We ask that all MGH Investigators interested in applying for any limited submission award submit a Letter of Intent (see detailed instructions below) to the MGH Executive Committee on Research (ECOR) by the deadline indicated for each award to be considered to receive an institutional nomination. 

CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES:

See full details for all awards on our website.

No Current Opportunities Open

Foundation Funding Opportunities

Please contact Corporate & Foundation Relations in the Office of Development at devcfr@mgh.harvard.edu if you wish to submit a proposal in response to any of these opportunities. Note that proposals are still routed through the standard InfoEd/Research Management process.

For all open foundation funding announcements, see the MGB Innovation External Funding Database



CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES:

See this week’s full foundation funding announcements (including eligibility, RM deadlines, and IDC) on our website.

1. AGA-Caroline Craig Augustyn and Damian Augustyn Award in Digestive Cancer, American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Research Foundation. $40,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: September 12
2. Fellowship-to-Faculty Transition Awards, American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Research Foundation. $130,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: September 12
3. Pilot Research Awards, American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Research Foundation. $40,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: September 12
4. Grants for Inner Ear Hearing and Balance Disorders Research (multiple opps), American Hearing Research Foundation (AHRF). $75,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: August 15
5. Impacting Blood Cancers through Clinical Repurposing Trials, Cures Within Reach. $75,000 (institutional match required). LOI Deadline: July 29
6. Damon Runyon–St. Jude Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. $300,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: August 15
7. Grant Program (multiple career stages), Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER). $250,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: August 15
8. Global Team Science Award, Lupus Research Alliance. $3 million (10% IDC). LOI Deadline: August 15
9. Research Grants (multiple career stages), Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA). $80,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: July 15
10. Seed Grants for Research in Childhood Cancer (multiple opps), Pablove Foundation. $100,000 (5% IDC). LOI Deadline: July 1
11. NEW! Linking Early Neurodevelopment to Neural Circuit Outcomes, Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). $900,000 (20% IDC). Application Deadline: September 12
12. Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF). $180,000 (No IDC). Application Deadline: December 5
13. Institutional Challenge Grant, William T. Grant Foundation. $650,000 (15% IDC). Proposal Deadline: September 12

Do you want to learn more about identifying external funding opportunities? Please click here to request a research consultation with Amy Robb or see ECOR’s website for information on the Pivot database.

NEW MGB Postdoctoral Salary Update

The NIH recently posted their 2024 NRSA salary scale for postdoctoral fellows. While the NIH has traditionally increased their scale by about 3% every year, this year they increased the scale by 8% in recognition of the their stated goal of trying to get to starting salary of $70,000 within 5 years. The $70,000 goal is based on the recent “NIH ADVISORY COMMITTEE TO THE DIRECTOR WORKING GROUP ON RE-ENVISIONING NIH-SUPPORTED POSTDOCTORAL TRAINING”.

Last year, MGB mandated a new postdoc salary floor, effective October 1, 2024. The language of the announcement read: “MGB will require that postdocs be paid at market rate, which is assumed now to be 20% over the NIH/NRSA scale.” Most PIs have actively been planning for that transition, assuming that the FY25 salary floor would be based on normal escalation of the 2023 NRSA scale + 20%. Fair to say that no one planned for the NIH to increase the scale to the extent they did.  

Learn more

Participate in the 2024 Research Risk Assessment

The Research Compliance Office at MGH is inviting members of the research community to complete the 2024 Research Risk Assessment Survey to help us identify areas of risk within the MGH research infrastructure. Your feedback is pivotal in developing future initiatives and work plans items centered around better utilizing our resources. Input from previous risk assessments has been incredibly valuable and has led to initiatives like the Transfer Out Process, BioLift, the Onboarding Checklists, and more.

The Research Risk Assessment Survey is available now in RedCap and will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. The survey is available to all, and we encourage you to use your own experiences to inform your responses. At the start of the survey, you will be presented with 8 categories and asked to identify 5 areas within our infrastructure that you believe pose the most risk to the institution or the quality of your work. You will then be asked to score those categories on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 as the greatest risk. After scoring, you will be asked to identify specific activities within those categories that pose a risk. You also have an opportunity to describe why you chose that activity and add additional feedback regarding anything that was not included in the survey. All responses are completely anonymous.

The Research Risk Assessment will be available June 10th, 2024. Let us know if you have any questions or concerns by contacting MGH Research Compliance at researchcompliance@mgh.harvard.edu. 

HIV/AGING Internships

What?

The MGH Medical Practice Evaluation Center and Center for Aging and Serious Illness

are offering two mentored, paid internships for Summer and Fall.

WhO?

The Medical Practice Evaluation Center (MPEC) is an interdivisional center dedicated to improving clinical outcomes, increasing value in health policy, and informing global public health through innovative research, collaboration, and education. The Center for Aging and Serious Illness (CASI) aims to improve the well-being of older adults and enhance the lived experience of those with advanced illnesses.

Learn More

Nominate a Scientific Superstar

STAT is thrilled to announce that our search for the brightest young minds in academia, industry, and clinical fields is officially underway for the 2024 edition of our esteemed Wunderkinds program.

We are dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the remarkable contributions of early-career researchers who are already making waves in their respective fields and are poised for even greater achievements in the future.

Nominations are open until July 15th through our short nomination form.

Learn more

Health Equity Data & Delivery Science Certificate Program

The Mongan Institute would like to invite you to join the inaugural class of the Health Equity Data & Delivery Science Certificate Program (HEDDS) beginning in October 2024. HEDDS, hosted by the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, will equip clinician scientists and early career researchers with practical knowledge and fundamental skills in health care data science, health care delivery science, and health equity science. HEDDS is designed to accommodate the schedules of busy professionals using a hybrid design that includes virtual lectures and interactive small group sessions along with a series of in-person workshops.

Applicants are anticipated to have a master’s degree, medical degree, doctoral degree, or prior research experience conducting research in relevant fields.

Learn more

See these events and more on the calendar of events

Clinical Research Council

Tuesday, May 28, 9:00-10:00 am

Join us for a presentation from Jane Murray about Digital Research Strategy. There will also be a discussion and an opportunity for researchers to provide feedback on the current research IT infrastructure and the strategy moving forward.

Parenting Series 2023-2024: The Crucial C’s & Family Meetings

Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 12:00 – 1:00 pm

The Parenting Series is an Office for Women’s Careers initiative focused on well-being and work-life balance for MGH faculty and trainee parents.

Join Professional Parent Educator Vicki Hoefle as she introduces concepts and strategies for building and maintaining a cooperative, engaging, and respectful environment for both adults and children, especially when challenging behaviors arise. She’ll introduce the helpful concepts of Family Meetings and the Crucial C’s (connect, capable, count, courage) which are strategies for helping kids move from useless to useful behavior.

Biobank Portal

Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 10:00 – 11:00 am

The Partners Biobank Portal is a tool that links consented subjects from the Partners Biobank with their health care data from the electronic medical record (EMR) and allows researchers to request clinical samples for these subjects.

This course will provide an introduction to the use of the Biobank Portal application for clinical research, including the review of healthcare data, types of samples available, genomic information and requesting data. The course is geared toward investigators and staff at all levels interested in the utility and information of the Biobank Portal for research.

Introduction to RPDR

Thursday, May 30, 2024, 11:00 – 12:30 pm

“Finding your Voice through Writing in Medicine” 



The Research Patient Data Registry (RPDR)* brings clinical information to the researcher's fingertips and ensures the security of patient information by controlling and auditing the distribution of patient data within the guidelines of the IRB.

This course will provide an introduction to the use of the RPDR (Research Patient Data Registry) application for clinical research, including the review of healthcare data, creating a query and requesting data. The course is geared toward investigators and staff at all levels interested in the utility and information of the RPDR for research.

*Link requires you to be on an MGB workstation or VPN.

Nancy J. Tarbell, MD Faculty Development Lecture Series

Thursday, May 30, 2024, 12:00 – 1:00 pm

Registration needed for serving lunch

“Finding your Voice through Writing in Medicine” 

Presenter: Grace C. Huang, MD, Dean for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center 

Learning Objectives:

• Name personal and cognitive barriers to academic writing.
• Identify opportunities to turn routine work into scholarship.
• Describe one strategy to commit to express your passions through writing.

NEW Town Hall for Strategic & Agile Decision-Making Work Group 

Thursday, May 30, 2024, 4:00 – 5:00 pm

Input from our MGB research community is critical to the development of the strategic plan. Please join the Strategic & Agile Decision-Making Working Group for a town hall where they will share their progress and leave the majority of time for questions/feedback.  

REDCap Getting Started 

Friday, May 31, 2024 10:00 – 11:00 am

In collaboration with the Harvard Catalyst, REDCap is a free, secure, web-based application hosted by Partners Research Computing and designed to support electronic data capture for research studies. 

This course will provide a high-level overview of the REDCap tool. Learn about study start-up, project life cycles, data management, and how to program data fields and branching logic. There will be time devoted to user’s Q&A and design questions.

NEW Catalyst CTSA Grant Opportunity 

Friday, May 31, 2024

The Harvard Catalyst is seeking potential applicants for Supplements to the Catalyst CTSA grant. These 1-2 year grants support salaries for investigators engaged in clinical/translational research. Fellows, post-docs, or early career faculty may be eligible for a Diversity Research Supplement, and post-docs and early career faculty may be eligible for a Re-entry Research Supplement.

Introduction to Bioinformatics

Monday, June 3rd | 3:30-5:00pm 

Tuesday, June 18th | 3:30-5:00pm 

Speaker: Ruslan Sadreyev, Director of Bioinformatics

This introductory mini-course is intended for experimental and clinical researchers who would like to get oriented in basic Bioinformatics concepts and tools. It is intended as a primer that would allow you to better understand general ideas, approaches, and available methods, and to start asking the right questions about your experimental data in the context of major next-generation sequencing applications: RNA-seq, single-cell RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, metagenomics, pathway analyses etc. 

If you want to drill very deeply into a specific question or to get hands-on experience, this probably isn't a course for you. However, we are open to organizing more in-depth courses and workshops in the future.

NEW 2024 HDDC Spring Symposium

Tuesday June 4, Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Boston Children's Hospital, Folkman Auditorium



Join us in person for the 2024 Harvard Digestive Diseases Center Spring Symposium. we will have great speakers and discussion at this event. Find more information below.

NEW 2024 Anne Klibanski Visiting Lecture Series 07

Wednesday, June 5, 2024, 12:00 - 1:00



"Big Data, Causal Methods and Clinical Conundrums: Using Observational Data to Emulate Target Trials and Answer Difficult Questions in Obstetric Practice"

Presenter:

Anthea Lindquist, MBBS, DPhil, Obstetrician/gynaecologist and perinatal epidemiologist, Mercy Hospital for Women, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Helen Gurley Brown Presidential Summit on Women and Science

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, Conference Center, 3rd Floor, Room 306

450 Brookline Avenue, Boston



Join us in person or virtually via zoom to hear from prominent leaders in the science community, celebrate and support women in research and medicine, and engage in a dynamic Q&A session. The Summit will be followed by a networking reception for those able to join in-person.

NEW Annual NORCH Symposium

Wednesday, June 5th, 2023; 8:30am - 4:00pm



The 25th Annual Harvard Nutrition and Obesity Symposium will explore the latest research on a wide range of topics regarding new strategies for the medical management of obesity. We hope to address this topic from molecular mechanisms to health equity. We have an excellent line up of speakers including Dr. Caroline Apovian giving the George L. Blackburn Keynote Lecture, “State of the Art Summary of Current Pharmacological Strategies for Obesity Management.”

NEW Cognitive Interviewing

Thursday, June 6, 2024, 11:00 - 12:00 pm



This one session course will guide clinical researchers on how to utilize cognitive interviewing for instrument development. We’ll address how to use this technique to collect data to enhance the validity of an assessment instrument (survey) and assess participants’ understanding of an item and responses to an item. The course will be most beneficial for individuals who have an interest or experience in survey development. *Please note this course is only offered to MGH faculty and staff.

NEW Speed Mentoring Hour

Thursday, June 6, 2024, 3:00 - 4:00 pm



This session is with John T. Mullen, MD, Director, General Surgery Residency Program; and Jessica B. McCannon, MD, Physician, Pulmonary & Critical Care Unit.

Mentor leaders will meet with up to 8 faculty members, each given 7-8 minutes to ask questions on any aspect of mentoring or being mentored and receive input from the mentor leaders.

NEW RCR Program: Managing Conflicts of Interest

Thursday, June 6, 2024, 4:00 - 5:00 pm



In this interactive seminar, participants will learn how to define conflicts of interest in research and resources regarding disclosure. The course will review rules to prevent conflicts of interest and the disclosure system and process. Students will learn how to initiate reports to mitigate potential personal interest conflicts. 

NEW MGH Ode to Joy: A celebration of the arts

Monday, June 10th, 2024, 4:00 - 5:00 pm

The Center for Faculty Development announces the first MGH Ode to Joy—an in-person celebration to recognize the incredible talent that exists outside of and beyond the talent performed in MGH labs, clinics, and OR, and revel together in the transformative power of artistic expression.Food will be provided.

NEW Faculty Transition Webinar Series Session 5

Thursday, June 20th, 2024, 12:00 - 1:00 pm

The Faculty Transition Webinar Series sponsored by the Office for Senior Faculty Affairs addresses the many elements that come into play as faculty move toward retirement.

This is an entirely new webinar focused on a topic of increasing interest: The mechanics of *partial* retirement while still maintaining an MGH and HMS connection. Topics will include maintaining an HMS appointment and the requirements for maintaining benefits and other MGH privileges.

Panelists:

Bethany Westlund, PhD, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, HMS

Mindy Dellert, Academic Appointments Manager, HMS

Jeffrey L. Ecker, MD, Chief, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, MGH

Virginia C. Rosales, CEBS, HR Benefits Manager, MGH MGPO Professional Staff Benefits

10th Annual World Medical Innovation Forum

September 23-25, 2024

Presented by Mass General Brigham and Bank of America, the 2024 World Medical Innovation Forum will focus on three major investment and scientific growth areas—oncology, rare disease, and immunology and inflammation. At the Forum, you’ll have direct access to speakers and peers including dozens of leading CEOs, senior investors, entrepreneurs, government officials, and prominent Harvard clinicians and scientists.

We look forward to welcoming you to Boston—the hub of biotech—and the state-of-the-art meeting center at the top-rated Encore Boston Harbor September 23–25.

4th Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry

September 26-27, 2024

The Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry, hosted by the MGH Center for Precision Psychiatry, is becoming a leading venue for showcasing advances in the application of precision medicine approaches to psychiatric research and clinical practice. The Conference will be held virtually over the course of two days: Thursday, September 26th and Friday, September 27th, 2024. 

Earn 7 continued education credits for participating this year!

Cambridge Science Festival

Sunday September 29, 2024, 12:00 - 4:00 PM

The Mass General Research Institute will once again be participating in the Cambridge Science Festival's Science Carnival and Robot Zoo this September. We're on the lookout for enthusiastic scientists from Mass General (like you!) to join forces and create engaging experiments and activities aimed at sparking curiosity amount kids about how the human body works.

Think along the lines of emonstarting lung function using ballons or extra cting DNA from straberries - the sky's the limit!

Please sumbit your proposal by June 7th at 12:00 am.

Two Meditation Sessions available every week 



SESSION 1: Meditation Monday with Dr. Darshan Mehta 

Every Monday, 8:00 – 8:30 am, Zoom next session, Monday, May 27!

Co-sponsored by the Center for Faculty Development’s Office for Well-Being and the MGPO Frigoletto Committee

Join Darshan Mehta, MD, MPH, Director, Office for Well-Being, for a guided meditation session on the Monday morning. 

Register and add to calendar

SESSION 2: Midweek Meditation with Guest Leader 

Every Wednesday, 8:00 – 8:30 am, Zoom next session, Wednesday, May 29!

Sponsored by the Center for Faculty Development’s Office for Well-Being

Join guest leader, Maria Shea, Cardiology Division, for next Wednesday’s guided meditation session.

Register and add to calendar

See these events and more on the calendar of events

Research Institute website

Bench Press Blog

MGH Research Intranet