Team Science in Action
Team Science in Action
On Friday, January 23, members attended MCIRCC’s federal research funding kickoff event—Meet me at the Intersection: High-Value Multidisciplinary Research Opportunities to Transform Critical Care. Participants learned about MCIRCC’s team science vision, three specific large-scale funding targets for 2015, the new Proposal Development Unit’s (PDU) services and capabilities, and the soon-to-launch Virtual Institute.
MCIRCC’s PDU manager, Jaine Place, presented the Center’s approach to team science and provided insight into MCIRCC’s strategy for large-scale, team-driven research funding that addresses complex critical care problems. Three federal funding targets for 2015 were discussed in detail:
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NIH/NIBIB Quantum Program: a technological innovation to solve a major medical or public health challenge; $4 million.
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U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command External Research Program: specifically the Combat Casualty Care Research Program and the Medical Simulation and Information Sciences Program; no specified maximum.
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NSF/NIH Smart and Connected Health Program: the development of next-generation health and healthcare research through high-risk, high-reward advances in understanding and applications of information science, technology, behaviour, cognition, sensors, robotics, bioimaging, and engineering; $2 million.
MCIRCC’s directors, Kevin Ward, MD, and Shuichi Takayama, PhD, led discussions on potential proposal themes for these targets. Dr. Ward noted MCIRCC’s ability to draw on U-M’s clinical and engineering expertise, as well as other competitive resources to win high-value proposals.
Citing examples, he explained that U-M has one of the largest microfluidic platforms in the country, an excellent Center for Systems Biology, one of three NIH-funded centers researching metabolites to detect small changes in cell behavior and organ function (Michigan Regional Comprehensive Metabolomics Resource Core), and an institute focusing on data science (Michigan Institute for Data Science), among others.
Jaine Place announced the launch of the PDU, which takes a strategic, proactive, catalytic, and capacity-building approach to help members plan and execute winning proposals. The PDU offers consultation, coaching and intensive proposal development assistance to multidisciplinary research teams addressing issues related to critical care in excess of $2 million. The PDU also assists members with setting up personalized funding alerts.
The workshop also featured a demonstration of the soon-to-launch Virtual Institute—a web-based collaboration tool available exclusively to MCIRCC members to help facilitate team collaboration and knowledge sharing. The Virtual Institute will house information about the PDU and its services, and include other robust features to further team science initiatives.
The afternoon concluded with a networking reception where participants explored new ideas with fellow members from departments and colleges across the University.
To see the workshop summary report and action items, as well as links to all presentation and handout materials, click here.