02/14/13

Tuskegee: Could it Happen Again…?

Over 40 years ago, the now infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study became public, leading to the establishment of laws protecting human subjects involved in research. But can something like Tuskegee happen again?

Join us as we have an open forum with UM-Flint’s Institutional Review Board to discuss federal regulations and the precautions taken to protect human subjects. 12:30 – 1:30 pm in the Office of Research, 530 FH. Refreshments will be provided.

09/6/12

Human Subject Research Reminder

A few important reminders regarding Human Subjects Research:

  1. If you conduct human subjects research,  please submit an application for IRB approval, allowing 2 to 4 weeks  for minimal risk, US-based  research and 4 to 8 weeks for projects with greater risk and/or an international focus.  If your role is  faculty advisor/mentor, please ensure that student-initiated human research projects are evaluated for scientific merit and reduction of risk.
  2. Classroom projects involving human participants, where the intent is to teach concepts and methods and not to produce generalizable knowledge do not normally fall under IRB review.   Course instructors carry the responsibility of ensuring the class projects are conducted ethically.

Please visit the Human Subjects Website: http://www.umflint.edu/humansubjects for more information or contact the [email protected]

08/14/12

Free Webinars

The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs is offering several free Webinars:

Monday, August 20, 2012

*2:10-3:00pm – NSF Science of Broadening Participation: This session will provide details and strategies for developing proposals using cognitive, social and economic approaches and strengthening U.S. STEM capabilities.

*3:15-4:10pm – NIH Support for Non-Research Intensive Institutions: Supporting small scale faculty projects involving undergraduate and graduate students.

*4:15-5:10pm – NEA: Research Grants and Interdisciplinary Work: This session will involve health and economics, and include an update on NEA-led Arts and Human Development Task Force.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

*1:00-1:50pm – NSF Discovery Research K-12: This session will provide a program update and give details on framing competitive proposals to solve STEM education challenges.

*2:00-2:50pm – HRSA’s Grants Technical Outreach Program: Writing a strong proposal, understand the review process and overview of the new resource.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

*10:00-11:00am – NSF Undergraduate Education Funding: Provide advice for members preparing proposals for any of the division’s three dozen competitions.

**Each webinar will take place in the ORSP conference room, 530 French Hall

05/24/12

Tips for Successful Applications to External Funding Sources

When submitting grants, each proposal needs a Primary Research Administrator and a Primary Post-Award Contact, which are assigned roles for representatives of the Flint Office of Research. These roles are assigned in the Proposal Approval Form (PAF), immediately following the Administrative Personnel section. It is important to assign these roles to representatives in the Office of Research for Pre-Award and Post-Award Administration. This establishes a single point of contact on our campus, and enhances communication with the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs in Ann Arbor. The assigned representatives in the Flint Office of Research will keep the PI and Unit Administrator fully informed of all Pre-Award and Post-Award operations.

Keep in mind, the PI and Unit Administrator, as well the representatives from the Office of Research, should all be given ‘Edit’ access in the PAF. This allows for interactivity between the Office of Research and PI and Unit Administrator, and it allows for timely additions and corrections, decreasing the likelihood of last-minute proposal submission errors. Also, this facilitates all Pre-and-Post-Award Administration operations.

10/26/10

Changes in NSF Proposal and Award Policies & Procedures

NSF has instituted significant changes to the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide, including a requirement for Special Information and Supplementary Documentation.  NSF 11-1 January 2011 is effective for proposals submitted on or after January 18, 2011.  Some of these changes are listed below in Item # 15.   Proposals due before this date should follow the guidelines in NSF 10-1  http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf101

10/26/10

Promoting Innovation in the Social Sciences

The Office of the Vice President for Research and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies is pleased to announce a request for proposals for a new program, the Social Sciences Annual Institute:  A Five-Year Experiment in Promoting Innovation in the Social Sciences.

The program is intended to support innovative proposals for new directions in the social sciences. The RFP can be viewed and downloaded from http://research.umich.edu/social-sciences-initiative/

Two-page pre-proposals are due November 12. Those who are invited to submit full proposals should plan to do so by December 10. Questions can be directed to Toni C. Antonucci at [email protected] or Marvin Parnes at [email protected]

08/30/10

National Science Foundation Funding Opportunities and Grant-writing Tips for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Scientists

October 14, 2010 – 2 to 4pm
Wayne State University, Welcome Center Auditorium

Dr. Mark Weiss, Director for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) invites social, behavioral, and economic scientists from local universities to attend a session on the structure of NSF, funding opportunities offered by NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Division, and tips on writing grants for NSF.

Click here for more information and to register (required). This event is free.

07/22/10

Nominations and Other Opportunities for CUR Members

Members of CUR have been receiving notices of opportunities to share their experiences and views related to undergraduate research on various Advisory Boards, Commissions and other panels in Washington, DC for some time.  Washington Partners monitors and identifies such opportunities, and shares them with CUR leadership, who subsequently passes them on.  Knowing that such one-topic e-mails might get lost in inboxes, going forward, these notices will be supplemented with an aggregate listing in this communication each month.  Please know that some opportunities are particularly time sensitive, and will still be shared individually, but Washington Partners is hopeful an aggregate listing is helpful to CUR members interested in such opportunities. 

In addition, CUR is working with Washington Partners to establish a resource that can be relied upon when opportunities to testify before Congressional, federal or other panels in Washington, DC or elsewhere arise.  Robin Howard of CUR’s staff recently sent an email to members regarding this effort.  If you haven’t already looked at that effort on CUR’s website, please do so at http://cur.networkats.com/members_online/members/viewmember.asp.

07/22/10

Senate Committee to Act on Undergraduate Research Policy

As recently as last week, observers thought it unlikely that the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee would act before the Congressional recess on legislation that would reauthorize the America COMPETES Act.  In May, the House passed legislation (HR 5116) to reauthorize the 2007 law and has been waiting for the Senate to follow suit, and CUR recently joined other groups in writing to Senate lawmakers urging them to act on the bill.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to mark up a number of bills on Thursday, July 22, including S 3605, the American COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.  This bill, which was introduced by Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV), would maintain funding for programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but is a proposal that differs a bit from the House-approved legislation.  That bill included a National Nanotechnology Initiative and other programs absent from the Senate legislation.

Supporters of the many programs authorized by the America COMPETES Act have long lamented the disappointing lack of federal funding for them.  While this bill does not represent a commitment to funding, there are proposed changes to certain programs that would benefit undergraduate research.  Undergraduate research and courses of study are paid more attention at the NSF and other agencies in the proposed changes, as are primarily undergraduate institutions of higher education.  There is a new provision of the research experiences for undergraduate students (REU) program that directs the Director of NSF to require that every recipient of a research grant from the NSF proposing to include one or more students enrolled in certificate, associate, or baccalaureate degree programs in carrying out the research proposed under the grant shall request support, including stipend support, for those students as part of the research proposal itself versus in a supplement to the proposal (unless participation of the undergraduate student was not foreseeable at the time of the original proposal).  The House-passed bill includes a similar provision.

More broadly, both the House and Senate bills propose changes to programs that recognize the important contributions primarily undergraduate institutions, two-year institutions and undergraduates can and do play in the research enterprise, and there are proposals to diversify collaborative research applications that embrace this notion.

The Council on Undergraduate Research supports this legislation and is hopeful that House and Senate lawmakers will work together to enact the measure before year’s end.  In coming weeks, CUR and Washington Partners, LLC will continue to monitor Congressional action and weigh in with lawmakers on the proposed changes that will benefit undergraduate research.

07/20/10

Data sharing panel/discussion on July 27th

Sharing Research Data: Perspectives from the Campus Community
A panel and discussion on sharing research data will be held next Tuesday from 2:30-4pm in the Library Gallery (100 Hatcher Graduate Library).

Data have been in the spotlight recently, with government open data initiatives spurring interest in data sharing and interoperability. Funding programs such as DataNet aim to build the necessary infrastructure to allow research data to be shared seamlessly and preserved for the long term. At the May 5th meeting of the National Science Board, NSF officials announced that starting in October 2010 all proposals submitted to the NSF must include a data management plan, including provisions for the sharing of research data. In FY 2008-09 University of Michigan researchers received $64.8 million in NSF grants. How will these researchers deal with the new requirements, and how can the campus community best support them in sharing their data?

Please join the University of Michigan’s Art, Architecture, Science and Engineering Libraries and the Librarians’ Forum for an interdisciplinary discussion of data sharing and licensing options available to University of Michigan researchers. Representatives from a number of campus research communities will report on the current state of data sharing in their field. Presentations will be followed by discussion and Q&A.

This event is free and open to the public; no registration is required. Light refreshments will be served.

Speakers:

Dr. Philip Andrews is Professor in the departments of Biological Chemistry, Chemistry, and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan Medical School.  He received his B.S. degree in Chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Purdue University with Dr. Larry Butler. Recent work in Dr. Andrews’ laboratory has included the molecular architecture of organelles, analysis of phosphoproteins, methods for quantitative proteomics, approaches to improving interaction maps, and computational methods for analysis of proteomics data. Proteome informatics projects include development of new tools for de novo sequence analysis, spectral clustering (Bonanza), the Tranche data dissemination system, the proteomecomons.org data resource, an information management system for proteomics (PRIME), assessment of search results, and specialized tools for viewing and processing proteomics data (MSExpedite, Babel Fish).

Greg Grossmeier is Copyright Specialist at the University of Michigan Library, where his time revolves around giving presentations and answering copyright and publishing questions for faculty, staff, and students. He is also tasked with maintenance of the copyright website and with promoting Open Access publishing at the University. He consults with the Open.Michigan initiative on legal and policy matters around Open Educational Resources and is a Creative Commons Fellow, providing expertise on topics such as Open Educational Resources and the Free/Libre Open Source Software community.  Greg holds an MSI in Information Policy from the University of Michigan School of Information and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota.

Alex Kanous is Operations Manager of the Data Sharing & Intellectual Capital (DSIC) Knowledge Center, part of the National Cancer Institute’s caBIG initiative located at the University of Michigan. There he participates in a collaborative effort to encourage and facilitate data sharing to advance scientific discovery, consistent with applicable legal, regulatory, ethical and contractual requirements. Mr. Kanous has an MSI with a concentration in Information Policy from the University of Michigan School of Information and a JD with a focus on Intellectual Property from the Michigan State University College of Law.

Event Contact: Jacob Glenn [email protected]
Date: Jul 27th, 2010
Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm
Location: Hatcher Graduate Library, Gallery in Room 100
http://www.lib.umich.edu/gallery/events/sharing-research-data