UCR Research and Economic Development Newsletter: March 5, 2017
Michael Pazzani
Vice Chancellor for Research
and Economic Development
Back Issues of Newsletter: http://research.ucr.edu/vcr/newsletters.aspx
Grant Opportunity Search: http://pivot.cos.com
·
NSF CAREER Workshops: April 13 & 14,
·
Visit by Lewis-Burke, Funding Consultants
·
Pilot Grants supporting Translational
Research: March 20, 2017
·
Office of Research Integrity Website
Update
·
Getting Funded by NIH, March 24
·
Faculty Lunches: Immigration, High
Performance Computing, Computational Design
·
Australia: Another Tawny Frogmouth, a Baby Fruit
Bat, and Heron Island
NSF CAREER
Workshops
UCR will hold two
identical workshop on Thursday, April 13th and Friday,
April 14th, both from 11:30- 1:30pm in Room 240, Orbach
Science Library. Each will have a presentation on the NSF CAREER
program and a panel of faculty who received or reviewed for CAREER awards.
Lunch will be provided.
Visit by
Lewis-Burke, Funding Consultants
Representatives
of Lewis-Burke Associates will be visiting UCR on May 1 &2. The firm
monitors developments in Washington regarding funding for research and
education for higher education. With the new administration, we can
expect changes in federal policy in many agencies.
It’s anticipated there will be more clarity in May
than we have now. A typical visit includes presentations and discussions on
topics e.g., a particular agency (e.g., DOE) or a particular cross agency topic
(such as brain research). If you have suggestions for a topic that
you think a group of faculty would like to attend, please let me know and I’ll arrange.
Pilot Grants supporting
Translational Research 2017
The
UCR Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine (molmed.ucr.edu), is looking for applications
from faculty interested in pursuing early stage translational projects aimed at catalyzing
translational life-science research on campus to improve the health of
individuals by translating basic findings into future innovative diagnostic or
therapeutics.
Funds
for these pilot studies have been allocated to UC
Riverside by the State of California through Assembly Bill 2664, Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Initiative (AB2664) and by the Office for Research and
Economic Development (RED) of UCR. These grants are from $25,000 up to $50,000 total and requested funds should be adequate
to conduct the proposed studies; a duration of up to
one year.
It
is expected that successful awardees will use the data
generated by the grant to submit publications, translational grant proposals,
and patent applications as appropriate. Selected trans-funds awardees are
expected to present their research at the center’s annual symposium (the
inaugural symposium is being planned for May/June 2017).
The deadline for
submission is March 20th, 2017; funding
will commence May 1st 2017.
For more information visit molmed.ucr.edu or download the full RFA https://www.dropbox.com/s/tv92xvqn4eplq31/2017EPIC_MOLMED_RFA.pdf?dl=0 .
Office of Research
Integrity Website Update
The Office of Research
Integrity (ORI) is revising its committee webpages and guidance to ensure
researchers have easier access to information and resources. Some of the recent
updates include:
There are now separate
webpages for our two Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). There is one page with
information regarding socio-behavioral research (IRB-SB) and one regarding
clinical research (IRB-Clin).
The Institutional Biosafety
Committee (IBC) page now
includes the committee charter and easy-to-follow representations of key IBC
information. The SCRO page has
also been revised to follow the same layout.
Keep an eye out for future
ORI online updates, including revised sites for IACUC, DURC, more FAQ’s, and
other guidance.
ORI’s Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) page
contains lists which allow users to easily find
information about ORI services. So far, there are lists for IRB and IBC.
Additional FAQ lists are in development.
The revised page for
Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) provides information regarding training requirements
for different federal funders.
New ORI Pages now contain
sections asking users to comment anonymously on the page’s helpfulness and
point out any missing information. These comments are reviewed regularly as we
continue to streamline our processes and provide more helpful
support for UCR researchers.
Getting Funded by NIH: 3/24
UCR will hold a workshop by faculty who have served on NIH study
sections. This is scheduled for March 24 and will feature Kathryn Uhrich, Monica Carson, Xiaoping Hu, Aaron Seitz,
Stefano Lonardi, Katie Dehesh,
Bruce Link and Seema Tiwari-Woodruff, March 24,
11:00-12:30 Orbach Science Library 240 the goal
is to discuss how to get NIH funding from reviewers perspectives.
If you’d like a copy of Howard Moss’ Powerpoint on NIH funding, it’s available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/9wkk5a1yrvkn829/MossNIH.pdf?dl=0
And, if you’d like to watch
videos. NIH has a resource New
Peer Review Videos for Applicants and Reviewers
ý NIH’s Center for Scientific Review posted recordings of their most recent webinar series on peer
review.
2017 Faculty Networking Lunches
·
Immigration: Research on immigration 3/6/17
(register here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ucr-immigation-research-discussion-tickets-31567187307)
·
High Performance Computing on 3/13/17 (register
here: https://high_performance_computing.eventbrite.com)
·
Computational Design: 3/13/17 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lunch-session-computational-design-tickets-32263957365 This topic
includes computational design of novel materials, molecules, drugs, and other
engineering and scientific artifacts
The goal is get faculty with
common interests to meet each other in an informal setting and discuss possible
collaborations. All lunches are held at
11:55-1:00 in University Office Building Room 210.
The immigration lunch is intended to be broad covering all aspects of research on
immigration populations as well as immigration policy. It will catered by
a local Persian restaurant and include vegetarian and halal dishes.
I’m still looking for a topic for some weeks in
April. Suggestions from CHASS are particularly welcome since they have been underrepresented in recent lunches.
Australia: Another
Tawny Frogmouth, a Baby Fruit Bat, and Heron Island
The tawny frogmouth was quite
popular, so I thought I’d show another one on a
nest. If you look carefully, you can see it was sitting on a baby
frogmouth. (There were actually two, but only one is visible from this
angle).
(click
photo to enlarge)
By the way, Norm Ellstrand pointed out that the potoo
in Central and South America has a similar appearance and behavior to the
frogmouth. I have seen a potoo, but haven’t been able to locate my photo.
I might as well finish my
Australia photos, since the spring migration is picking up in Riverside.
In an earlier newsletter, I had a photo of an adult fruit bat
flying. They have a wingspan of about two feet. While
in Cairns, we walked past by the public library in the afternoon. The trees
there are filled with roosting fruit bats. We
encountered two women with nets on poles who were rescuing abandoned or
orphaned fruit bat babies. We struck up a conversation with them and they
let us see one of the babies.
(click
photo to enlarge)
One of our stops in Australia
was Heron Island, a coral cay on the Great Barrier Reef. While the herons
(actually egrets) are abundant, the island has become overrun
with buff-banded rails. Here’s a photo of one with a
chick.
(click
photo to enlarge)
Rails are usually elusive and
hide in reeds or other vegetation. I’ve seen a
Virginia rails for about 15 seconds (in Irvine actually). On Heron
Island, the buff-banded rails act more like pigeons. Here’s
a photo of one at the bar.
I read that in the 1998, the
buff-banded rails were rounded up and sent by boat to an
uninhabited island 10 miles away. Although rails don’t often fly, they flew back to the Heron Island,
arriving before the boat that dropped them off. If you really like rails, https://www.flickr.com/photos/pazzani/32473317011 is a video of one inspecting a camera and bathing in
the footbath.
We actually went to Heron
Island because of the turtles that nest there. We had visited the island in
1993 and learned that turtles lay their eggs on the same beach they are
born. Once hatched, the baby turtles crawl their way from the sand to the
sea where they spend 20-25 years before reaching maturity, finding a mate, and
returning to the beach where they are born to dig a nest and lay eggs.
The crawl to the sea is dangerous with sea gulls swarming down to eat the baby
turtles. In 1993, my wife and kids protected some baby turtles from
the gulls and carried them to the sea.
Two decades later we return to Heron Island. I got up early one
morning to find a turtle knocking against our door. Could it be the same turtle
my wife saved years ago? Is it possible the
grateful turtle came back to see us again?
I can’t
be sure, but it certainly looks like the same turtle.