Universities and the federal government have partnered on research for more than 70 years. F&A costs are negotiated rates that federal agencies provide institutions to enable research on their campuses. These funds support critical infrastructure, including biomedical core facilities, IT support, libraries, animal care facilities, financial accounting, security, utilities, insurance, among many other vital services and resources.

U-M's Office of Research DC team has been working diligently to educate policymakers in Washington on the importance of the research contract between government and research universities. While it is still uncertain whether the Administration will decide to impose a cap on F&A, the House Labor - HHS Appropriations Subcommittee included language in their recent bill that would instruct NIH to continue following current OMB guidance on F&A payments and prohibits the agency from making any changes moving forward.

A pre-submission application and meeting must be completed on or before Friday, August 25. The submission deadline for the full proposal will be on Friday, September 8 at 5:00 PM EST. 

You're invited to attend the Challenge Kick-Off Event, where IHPI will help match faculty with similar interests and will facilitate group brainstorming to generate ideas for potential collaborative research proposals. Project teams will then be encouraged to develop these ideas further and submit them to Competition Space by November 3, 2017. 

MPrOVE Challenge Kick-Off Wednesday, September 27 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM NCRC Building 18, Dining Hall

Visit their website  for more details and to register for the Kick-Off Event. The registration deadline is Friday, September 8 at 5:00 PM.

Innovators from all schools at the University of Michigan, other institutions of higher education, non-profit research centers, and hospital systems across Michigan are eligible to submit projects for funding consideration.

The RFP for Mi-TRAC is available in Competition Space, with proposals due on Monday, September 25. Each proposal will be evaluated on the basis of scientific merit, potential health care impact and significance, the potential for commercialization, and likelihood of obtaining further support. Earlier this year,  11 different proposals were awarded in the four targeted markets of devices, diagnostics, therapeutics, and healthcare IT, and we're looking forward to growing that number. The RFP for the next Mi-Kickstart will be announced later in the fall.

Complete instructions for proposal submission can be found on the  Mi-TRAC website.  

Questions? Contact Bradley Martin, Ph.D., MTRAC for Life Sciences Commercialization Program Director, at 734-936-8577 or [email protected].

Faculty and staff unable to travel to Towesly may login via BlueJeans , or attend the live streaming in the  Dining Hall of Building 18 at the North Campus Research Complex. Boxed lunches will also be provided to registered attendees at the NCRC Dining Hall. To register, email Joyce Kennedy .

Want to suggest topics for discussion or questions? Please send them in advance to [email protected].

The symposium will be hosted by George A. Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Director (MICHR); Executive Director, Translational Research (Office of Research); and Associate Dean For Clinical & Translational Research (Medical School), and highlights include a keynote address by Christopher P. Austin, Director, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health. 

For more information and to register, visit the event webpage.

This does  not apply to in-person ULAM workshops.

Learn more about how and when these changes will affect you and your laboratory staff by reviewing the  full announcement on the U-M Animal Care & Use Program's website.

Additional questions about animal care and use training should be directed to the ULAM Training Core at  734-763-8039 or [email protected].

The new platform features a flexible, robust, and scalable database environment, and a set of data pipeline tools that can ingest and process large amounts of data from sensors, mobile devices and wearables, and other sources of streaming data. 

Shortly after the Council meets, U-M's accreditation status will be communicated to our Institutional Official, S. Jack Hu, Ph.D., who will then make a community-wide announcement. 

Thank you for your continued dedication to achieving the highest animal welfare standards for all animals under your care, and for your unwavering commitment to our Program's collective success.

But amazingly, no national standard exists for how to train the staff who actually run these studies, even though they have to follow many federal regulations, interact with patients and health professionals, and act as the early warning system for problems. Many institutions have developed their own training methods and courses, but it's been hard to share them.

For more information, read the full announcement. 

The Animal Care and Germ Free Mouse Core , directed by Drs. Robert Sigler and Jennifer Lofgren, is the gateway for all phenotyping involving live mice; providing mouse importation, quarantine, housing, veterinary care, clinical chemistry, and histopathology services. The core also hosts a germ-free mouse facility, directed by Dr. Kathryn Eaton, which produces and distributes germ-free and gnotobiotic mouse models.

The Metabolism, Bariatric Surgery, and Behavior Core , directed by Drs. Malcolm Low, Nathan Qi, and Randy Seeley, performs a variety of in vivo physiological assessments encompassing glucose homeostasis, energy homeostasis, ultradian hormone secretion and behavioral measurements, and generates bariatric surgery models. 

The Microvascular Complications Core , directed by Drs. Eva Feldman, David Antonetti, and Jeffrey Hodgin, provides a complete range of microvascular phenotyping of murine models of diabetes, obesity and metabolic disease; including validated, reproducible and standardized phenotyping of the three major microvascular complications: diabetic polyneuropathy, nephropathy, and retinopathy.

The Microbiome Core , directed by Drs. Vincent Young, Patrick Schloss and Thomas Schmidt, serves the specific needs of investigators who are studying the role that complex microbial communities can play in shaping the overall metabolic state of their host. The core analyzes microbiome structure in mouse models of disease and cultivates microbes to permit hypothesis testing in murine models, including germ-free mice. 

What's next?  There is no action required! 

All CBR customers have to do is check their email for a MiCores invoice at the end of the monthly billing cycle. As before, funds will automatically be transferred to the CBR via a Service Unit Billing event. That's it!

Questions about your bill or the new billing system? Contact Zachary Klug.

Get more information about MiCores and check out an annotated sample MiCores invoice here.  For additional help, contact [email protected] .  

opportunities are also available.

The Michigan Medicine Corporate and Foundation Relations team can assist in the funding process, including providing direct communication with the funding entity to obtain guidance on project appeal/applicability to the funder, provide examples of previously funded U-M proposals, and answer general faculty questions. For a wide range of Foundation and Corporate funding opportunities, please visit our website.

Please note: A faculty member's research administrator will serve as the liaison on all aspects of the internal application process. If you are unsure of whom to talk to, your department contact can be found here. If you pursue any grant opportunity featured in this edition of Research News, please contact your research administrator first to formulate a submission plan and timeline.