Funding, News and Announcements

Hi everyone,

Given the dynamic nature of things these days at CIHR, few concrete updates were available at our August CIHR University Delegates teleconference. Of course, the focus of many is on the upcoming Fall Project and Foundation competitions. As noted in earlier updates – including the most recent communication from the chair of the Peer Review Working Group, several details regarding the Project Scheme application process have yet to be worked out, and there is a full day meeting of the PRWG on August 5 during which a number of the process details will be deliberated; a subsequent update (including hopefully timelines for the competitions) is expected around August 8. Although no changes are being made at this time to the Foundation Scheme, an inability to at least move forward with this competition is apparently related in part to the tying together of the Foundation and Project schemes in ResearchNet; CIHR needs to do some “untangling” because of changes being made to project submissions. I can tell you that for the Project scheme, the 10-page application will be “free-form” and will be uploaded to ResearchNet as a PDF – so applicants can begin working on their layout in Word. It has not been decided as yet whether PIs can apply for both Project and Foundation grants in this Fall competition. CIHR is still planning to deliver for an April 1 funding start date.

The remainder of the teleconference was used to raise issues that have been on the minds of many, including how to deal with “negligent” reviewers to ensure that they will not be involved in the upcoming competition. Apparently the College of Reviewers structure will look to track and regulate reviewer quality, but in the immediate term several UDs suggested that CIHR rely on the Virtual Chairs and applicant feedback from this last competition to screen out these reviewers. In this regard, CIHR encouraged that applicants file their comments and concerns with the Contact Centre where we are promised they will “be actioned”. Several questions also arose over the nature of the Clusters / Groups being proposed and whether they will essentially mimic the previous CIHR Committee subject areas; this will be part of the PRWG discussions on August 5. The PRWG itself was the subject of some discussion, in particular how this smaller group (drawn from the subset of participants at the emergency July 13 meeting) was formed. As many of you have noted, there is no PRWG representation east of Quebec. Clearly we need to continue to push for more inclusive representation as we move past this immediate crisis, including actively volunteering for VC and College of Reviewer roles.

As one final note, UDs requested the rank distribution graphs along with the “cut-off” points for the recently completed competition; CIHR is “working on the analytics” now and has promised to release this information shortly.

CIHR Gold Leaf Prizes
A reminder that CIHR has a new suite of prizes for individuals or teams for excellence in health research and its translation into benefits for Canadians, with awards for “Impact”, “Discovery”, “Outstanding Achievements by an Early Career Investigator”, and “Transformation” (Patient engagement). Each CIHR Gold Leaf Prize has a value of $100,000. Full descriptions can be found here. Note that nominations close September 6, 2016.

As always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Regards,

Mark Filiaggi
CIHR University Delegate
Associate Vice-President Research
filiaggi@dal.ca
(902) 494-7102