2021 HHS Small Business Program Conference: Diverse Perspectives SEEDing Impactful Innovations

March 31, 2021

We are working to identify ways to lower barriers for all new applicants to the NIH SBIR and STTR programs. Conferences have the ability to bring people together expressly to share perspectives and exchange expertise, including the lessons of personal experience. That is why I am pleased to announce as a first step in addressing these concerns we will be sponsoring the 2021 HHS Small Business Program Conference with the theme “Diverse Perspectives SEEDing Impactful Innovations.” The meeting will take place virtually April 26-30 and registration is free.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Extramural Scientific Workforce – Outcomes from an NIH-Led Survey

March 25, 2021

At NIH, we recognized the many ways the COVID-19 pandemic could adversely affect the biomedical workforce, particularly members of underrepresented groups and vulnerable populations. In October 2020, NIH fielded two online surveys to objectively document COVID-19’s impact on extramural research. One survey assessed the perspective of individual research administration leaders at extramural institutions, and the other survey assessed the perspective of the researchers themselves. In this post, we offer a high-level overview of general trends noted within both surveys.

Webinar Available on Progress Towards Reducing Administrative Burden While Maintaining Animal Welfare and Scientific Integrity

March 17, 2021

The NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW), along with their colleagues from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), recently presented a webinar discussing progress towards implementing the 21st Century Cures Act. The new webinar focuses on how the three agencies recommend reducing administrative burden on investigators while maintaining the integrity and credibility of research findings and the protection of research animals. The actions discussed follow the release of their final report in 2019.

Parenting in a Time of COVID

March 9, 2021

Next week marks the one-year anniversary of NIH shifting to maximum telework in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like employers and employees across the country, overnight we needed to adapt our entire enterprise and reinvent our jobs in the virtual workplace.

CSR’s Commitment to Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Peer Review

March 8, 2021

On March 1, NIH Director Francis Collins announced NIH’s broad-based initiative, UNITE, to end structural racism and racial inequities in biomedical science. This is a recognition of the need for urgent, sustained effort on many fronts across the research enterprise, including in all parts of the NIH’s extramural processes, to change culture. While the NIH Institutes and Centers will examine their programmatic priorities and discretionary funding practices, here at CSR, we are committed to pushing ahead with efforts to protect the peer review process from the systemic biases that exist in all areas of the scientific community.