theurbanhermit (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theurbanhermit) wrote,@ 2007-09-18 19:00:00 |
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2821
boston.com:
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Boston dominates NIH grants to innovators
By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent
Boston-area scientists made a strong showing in two government grant programs designed to spur innovative medical research in an era of tight federal funding.
Sixteen of 41 winners announced today by the National Institutes of Health are from Greater Boston. Half of this year's 12 recipients of the prestigious Pioneer Award work at Boston-area hospitals or universities, and 10 out of 29 New Innovator awards are going to investigators in Boston or Cambridge. Pioneer grant winners receive $2.5 million and New Innovators get $1.5 million, all over five years.
"I think it's a real testimony to the area," Jeremy M. Berg (left), director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, said in an interview today. "Boston is certainly known for having a large number of high-quality educational institutions, like Harvard and MIT, but also many others. These are very much individual-based awards, though, so it's really a reflection of the ability of these institutions to recruit outstanding people."
This is Boston's best showing in the Pioneer competition, now in its fourth year, and only California has come close to Massachusetts' success, accounting for six of the 13 Pioneer winners in 2005. In 2004, Harvard researchers took home two of nine grants. In 2005, one winner was from Massachusetts, and last year four out of 13 scientists, including one from UMass-Amherst, were from the state. This is the first year for the New Innovator grants.
Berg runs the two grant programs under an NIH initiative intended to support bold and unconventional research that could have a big payoff but also has a higher than usual risk of failure and is therefore less likely to receive approval through the traditional grant process. While the Pioneer awards go to researchers at any point in their careers, the New Innovator awards are limited to scientists who are within 10 years of finishing their doctoral degrees or clinical training and who have not yet won NIH grants for their independent research.
Younger scientists have been waiting longer to get their first grants, from an average age of the mid-30s about 10 years ago to their 40s in recent years, a symptom of increased competition for government funding for science that has been declining in real dollars. The NIH budget doubled from 1998 to 2003 but has been flat since, making it more difficult to win new grants and maintain previous support.
The New Innovator competition drew 2,200 applications, Berg said, compared with 450 for the Pioneer awards.
"We expected there would be a strong response, but not this strong," he said. "I don't think anybody would argue that by funding 1.3 percent of the 2,200 applications we got that we're making much of a dent in the demand."
The demand demonstrates the need for a program that supports riskier work, Berg said.
"The motivation for the program was to find a good way to get outstanding young scientists funded earlier in their careers and to encourage people to really work on things they were most excited about rather than being conservative" and working on things that have a better chance of getting funded, he said.
Nir Hacohen of Massachusetts General Hospital, who will study how the immune system senses infectious agents and turns on a response specific to viruses, bacteria or fungi, said the Innovator award he won is what's needed for science to make advances.
"Clearly people are starving for this kind of award," the 40-year-old researcher said in an interview. The current system tends to reward investigators who have already proven their ideas, he said.
Konrad Hochedlinger, 31, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at MGH, said his Innovator award will help him quickly advance his work in the fast-moving field of stem cell research. He has created a new approach based on work by Japanese scientists to reprogram adult cells into embryonic stem cells.
"It's important that funds be available immediately to get this off the ground rather than waiting for the regular R01 grant," he said in an interview.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (left) of Boston College, who won a Pioneer grant, will study the neuroanatomy of emotions such as anger and fear, pursuing a theory that doesn't fit conventional models. She said she understands how the traditional funding process works.
"It's a very risk-averse strategy, and if people have limited funds it's a good idea, but it can slow innovation and progress," she said in an interview.
Here is the complete list of Boston-area winners, with the NIH description of their research.
NIH Director’s Pioneer Award:
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College professor of psychology, who will study how the brain creates emotional experiences like anger and happiness.
Dr. Emery N. Brown, Massachusetts General Hospital professor of anesthesia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology, who will develop a systems neuroscience approach to study how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia.
James J. Collins, Boston University professor of biomedical engineering, who will develop systems biology and synthetic biology approaches to analyze the bacterial gene regulatory networks underlying cellular responses to antibiotics.
Takao K. Hensch, Children’s Hospital Boston professor of neurology, who will explore the role of noncoding RNAs in brain development and as a potential treatment for brain disorders.
Dr. Frances E. Jensen, Children’s Hospital Boston professor of neurology, who will examine how seizures in early life alter the developing brain and lead to cognitive disorders.
Gina Turrigiano, Brandeis University professor of biology, who will develop a very high-resolution microscope for probing the molecular structure of synapses.
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award:
Ed Boyden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor of biological engineering, who will invent and study new methods of controlling the neural circuits that malfunction in neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Sarah Fortune, Harvard School of Public Health assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases, who will investigate the mechanisms by which tuberculosis escapes the immune system response.
Dr. Levi A. Garraway, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute assistant professor of medicine, who will use a novel genetic and chemical screening approach to identify changes in malignant melanoma tumor cells that could be targets for new treatments.
Nir Hacohen, Massachusetts General Hospital assistant professor of medicine, who will use a new genetic approach to dissect immune system pathways that sense disease-causing agents.
Ekaterina Heldwein, Tufts University School of Medicine assistant professor of microbiology and molecular biology, who will use structural and biophysical approaches to discover, in atomic-level detail, how herpes viruses enter their host cells.
Konrad Hochedlinger, Harvard Stem Cell Institute assistant professor of medicine, who will study the reprogramming of adult mouse and human cells into embryonic cells by defined factors.
Alan Jasanoff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology N.C. Rasmussen Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, who will devise genetically controlled, noninvasive methods for measuring brain activity in animals.
Dr. Mark D. Johnson, Brigham and Women’s Hospital assistant professor of neurosurgery, who will examine the role of decreased synthesis of microRNA in the development and aggressiveness of human cancer.
Alan Saghatelian, Harvard University assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, who will develop advanced analytical chemistry approaches to characterize biomedically important enzymes.
Mehmet Fatih Yanik, Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who will develop microchip technologies to perform extremely fast studies of gene function in small animals to rapidly identify genetic targets for new drugs.
-------
Oy . . .
and I guess Abt'll be getting some clinical trials tossed its way . . .
I am to understand that the house keeps getting calls for Beaver . . . oy . . . tried to deliver rock salt the other day . . . I'm not interested in rock, thank you . . . (ah: the Park Street purchases refrenced by the worker?) . . .
Oy . . .
The thing about hte state department thwarting probes is that Condaleeza Rice oversees it, and she also over saw the tapping of American privacy . . . you;d expect anything less?
I thought it was a street hockey game the clacking of plastic on the street earlier . . . but no - just a cluster of roller bladers, skateboarders, and baby strollers . . . The Sin City Kevin was htere, talking about stalking . . . sadly, they were not in front of hte correct house set back form the street . . .
sad new yoda-speak bad poetry tactic of the HUMF spammers . . . saved in the HUMF Perv Spam file - like hte rest . . .
yahoo.com.news:
Polls: Distaste for Iraq war unchanged Tue Sep 18, 3:08 PM ET
Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress and President Bush's nationally televised address have had little impact on Americans' distaste for the Iraq war and their desire to withdraw U.S. troops, polls show.
Fifty-four percent still favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, a measurement that has not changed in months, according to a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. And despite slight improvements in peoples' views of military progress, more said the U.S. will likely fail in Iraq than succeed by 47 percent to 42 percent, about the same margin as in July.
Nearly half, or 49 percent, said Bush should remove more troops than he announced he would last week, when he said he would withdraw some forces but leave at least 130,000 in Iraq at least until next summer. Thirty-eight percent said Bush's plan goes far enough.
Overall, two out of three said their views on the war had not been changed by presentations last week by Bush and Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
In a separate survey by CBS News, fewer than a third said the roughly 30,000 additional troops Bush sent to the war zone this year have made things better, while the rest said they have had no impact or made things worse. That was similar to the findings of a CBS News-New York Times poll taken days before the remarks by Petraeus and Bush.
Only 22 percent said they are willing to keep large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq longer than two more years, largely unchanged from the previous survey. Nearly half, or 49 percent, said they should stay less than a year while 23 percent said they should remain for a year or two.
Even so, people expect the troops to stay longer than they would like. Only a third said they believe large U.S. forces will be in Iraq for two years or less.
The Pew poll was conducted Sept. 12-16 and involved telephone interviews with 1,501 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The CBS News poll was conducted Sept. 14-16 and involved telephone interviews with 706 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus four percentage points.
---------------
hU HR:'
31555 F-T 057 Senior Equipment Engineer
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for Nanoscale Systems 09/18/2007
31553 F-T 060 Director of Instructional Computing
Faculty of Arts and Sciences FAS Computer Services 09/18/2007
31551 F-T 058 Senior Software Engineer
Faculty of Arts and Sciences FAS Computer Services 09/18/2007
31550 F-T 058 Associate Director of Leadership Gifts, Harvard College Fund
Alumni Affairs and Development Harvard College Fund/San Francisco 09/18/2007
-------------
Oy . . .
and just think - Harvard College Fund and San Francisco - see previous entries on that fine city . . .
note too - 4 new upper level salary range postings . . .
In fact, 90% of today's externally viewable HU HR postings have a starting salary offer of $50,000 or better . . . .
What does that say for the U . . .
Eh?
Be well . ..
boston.com:
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Boston dominates NIH grants to innovators
By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent
Boston-area scientists made a strong showing in two government grant programs designed to spur innovative medical research in an era of tight federal funding.
Sixteen of 41 winners announced today by the National Institutes of Health are from Greater Boston. Half of this year's 12 recipients of the prestigious Pioneer Award work at Boston-area hospitals or universities, and 10 out of 29 New Innovator awards are going to investigators in Boston or Cambridge. Pioneer grant winners receive $2.5 million and New Innovators get $1.5 million, all over five years.
"I think it's a real testimony to the area," Jeremy M. Berg (left), director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, said in an interview today. "Boston is certainly known for having a large number of high-quality educational institutions, like Harvard and MIT, but also many others. These are very much individual-based awards, though, so it's really a reflection of the ability of these institutions to recruit outstanding people."
This is Boston's best showing in the Pioneer competition, now in its fourth year, and only California has come close to Massachusetts' success, accounting for six of the 13 Pioneer winners in 2005. In 2004, Harvard researchers took home two of nine grants. In 2005, one winner was from Massachusetts, and last year four out of 13 scientists, including one from UMass-Amherst, were from the state. This is the first year for the New Innovator grants.
Berg runs the two grant programs under an NIH initiative intended to support bold and unconventional research that could have a big payoff but also has a higher than usual risk of failure and is therefore less likely to receive approval through the traditional grant process. While the Pioneer awards go to researchers at any point in their careers, the New Innovator awards are limited to scientists who are within 10 years of finishing their doctoral degrees or clinical training and who have not yet won NIH grants for their independent research.
Younger scientists have been waiting longer to get their first grants, from an average age of the mid-30s about 10 years ago to their 40s in recent years, a symptom of increased competition for government funding for science that has been declining in real dollars. The NIH budget doubled from 1998 to 2003 but has been flat since, making it more difficult to win new grants and maintain previous support.
The New Innovator competition drew 2,200 applications, Berg said, compared with 450 for the Pioneer awards.
"We expected there would be a strong response, but not this strong," he said. "I don't think anybody would argue that by funding 1.3 percent of the 2,200 applications we got that we're making much of a dent in the demand."
The demand demonstrates the need for a program that supports riskier work, Berg said.
"The motivation for the program was to find a good way to get outstanding young scientists funded earlier in their careers and to encourage people to really work on things they were most excited about rather than being conservative" and working on things that have a better chance of getting funded, he said.
Nir Hacohen of Massachusetts General Hospital, who will study how the immune system senses infectious agents and turns on a response specific to viruses, bacteria or fungi, said the Innovator award he won is what's needed for science to make advances.
"Clearly people are starving for this kind of award," the 40-year-old researcher said in an interview. The current system tends to reward investigators who have already proven their ideas, he said.
Konrad Hochedlinger, 31, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at MGH, said his Innovator award will help him quickly advance his work in the fast-moving field of stem cell research. He has created a new approach based on work by Japanese scientists to reprogram adult cells into embryonic stem cells.
"It's important that funds be available immediately to get this off the ground rather than waiting for the regular R01 grant," he said in an interview.
Lisa Feldman Barrett (left) of Boston College, who won a Pioneer grant, will study the neuroanatomy of emotions such as anger and fear, pursuing a theory that doesn't fit conventional models. She said she understands how the traditional funding process works.
"It's a very risk-averse strategy, and if people have limited funds it's a good idea, but it can slow innovation and progress," she said in an interview.
Here is the complete list of Boston-area winners, with the NIH description of their research.
NIH Director’s Pioneer Award:
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College professor of psychology, who will study how the brain creates emotional experiences like anger and happiness.
Dr. Emery N. Brown, Massachusetts General Hospital professor of anesthesia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology, who will develop a systems neuroscience approach to study how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia.
James J. Collins, Boston University professor of biomedical engineering, who will develop systems biology and synthetic biology approaches to analyze the bacterial gene regulatory networks underlying cellular responses to antibiotics.
Takao K. Hensch, Children’s Hospital Boston professor of neurology, who will explore the role of noncoding RNAs in brain development and as a potential treatment for brain disorders.
Dr. Frances E. Jensen, Children’s Hospital Boston professor of neurology, who will examine how seizures in early life alter the developing brain and lead to cognitive disorders.
Gina Turrigiano, Brandeis University professor of biology, who will develop a very high-resolution microscope for probing the molecular structure of synapses.
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award:
Ed Boyden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor of biological engineering, who will invent and study new methods of controlling the neural circuits that malfunction in neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Sarah Fortune, Harvard School of Public Health assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases, who will investigate the mechanisms by which tuberculosis escapes the immune system response.
Dr. Levi A. Garraway, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute assistant professor of medicine, who will use a novel genetic and chemical screening approach to identify changes in malignant melanoma tumor cells that could be targets for new treatments.
Nir Hacohen, Massachusetts General Hospital assistant professor of medicine, who will use a new genetic approach to dissect immune system pathways that sense disease-causing agents.
Ekaterina Heldwein, Tufts University School of Medicine assistant professor of microbiology and molecular biology, who will use structural and biophysical approaches to discover, in atomic-level detail, how herpes viruses enter their host cells.
Konrad Hochedlinger, Harvard Stem Cell Institute assistant professor of medicine, who will study the reprogramming of adult mouse and human cells into embryonic cells by defined factors.
Alan Jasanoff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology N.C. Rasmussen Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, who will devise genetically controlled, noninvasive methods for measuring brain activity in animals.
Dr. Mark D. Johnson, Brigham and Women’s Hospital assistant professor of neurosurgery, who will examine the role of decreased synthesis of microRNA in the development and aggressiveness of human cancer.
Alan Saghatelian, Harvard University assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, who will develop advanced analytical chemistry approaches to characterize biomedically important enzymes.
Mehmet Fatih Yanik, Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who will develop microchip technologies to perform extremely fast studies of gene function in small animals to rapidly identify genetic targets for new drugs.
-------
Oy . . .
and I guess Abt'll be getting some clinical trials tossed its way . . .
I am to understand that the house keeps getting calls for Beaver . . . oy . . . tried to deliver rock salt the other day . . . I'm not interested in rock, thank you . . . (ah: the Park Street purchases refrenced by the worker?) . . .
Oy . . .
The thing about hte state department thwarting probes is that Condaleeza Rice oversees it, and she also over saw the tapping of American privacy . . . you;d expect anything less?
I thought it was a street hockey game the clacking of plastic on the street earlier . . . but no - just a cluster of roller bladers, skateboarders, and baby strollers . . . The Sin City Kevin was htere, talking about stalking . . . sadly, they were not in front of hte correct house set back form the street . . .
sad new yoda-speak bad poetry tactic of the HUMF spammers . . . saved in the HUMF Perv Spam file - like hte rest . . .
yahoo.com.news:
Polls: Distaste for Iraq war unchanged Tue Sep 18, 3:08 PM ET
Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress and President Bush's nationally televised address have had little impact on Americans' distaste for the Iraq war and their desire to withdraw U.S. troops, polls show.
Fifty-four percent still favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, a measurement that has not changed in months, according to a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. And despite slight improvements in peoples' views of military progress, more said the U.S. will likely fail in Iraq than succeed by 47 percent to 42 percent, about the same margin as in July.
Nearly half, or 49 percent, said Bush should remove more troops than he announced he would last week, when he said he would withdraw some forces but leave at least 130,000 in Iraq at least until next summer. Thirty-eight percent said Bush's plan goes far enough.
Overall, two out of three said their views on the war had not been changed by presentations last week by Bush and Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
In a separate survey by CBS News, fewer than a third said the roughly 30,000 additional troops Bush sent to the war zone this year have made things better, while the rest said they have had no impact or made things worse. That was similar to the findings of a CBS News-New York Times poll taken days before the remarks by Petraeus and Bush.
Only 22 percent said they are willing to keep large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq longer than two more years, largely unchanged from the previous survey. Nearly half, or 49 percent, said they should stay less than a year while 23 percent said they should remain for a year or two.
Even so, people expect the troops to stay longer than they would like. Only a third said they believe large U.S. forces will be in Iraq for two years or less.
The Pew poll was conducted Sept. 12-16 and involved telephone interviews with 1,501 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The CBS News poll was conducted Sept. 14-16 and involved telephone interviews with 706 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus four percentage points.
---------------
hU HR:'
31555 F-T 057 Senior Equipment Engineer
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for Nanoscale Systems 09/18/2007
31553 F-T 060 Director of Instructional Computing
Faculty of Arts and Sciences FAS Computer Services 09/18/2007
31551 F-T 058 Senior Software Engineer
Faculty of Arts and Sciences FAS Computer Services 09/18/2007
31550 F-T 058 Associate Director of Leadership Gifts, Harvard College Fund
Alumni Affairs and Development Harvard College Fund/San Francisco 09/18/2007
-------------
Oy . . .
and just think - Harvard College Fund and San Francisco - see previous entries on that fine city . . .
note too - 4 new upper level salary range postings . . .
In fact, 90% of today's externally viewable HU HR postings have a starting salary offer of $50,000 or better . . . .
What does that say for the U . . .
Eh?
Be well . ..
