Recent results suggests that glycans play critical roles in human physiology and pathology. Understanding glycan protein interactions may lead to next generation of drugs. But limited research is being funded on understanding structure - function relationships on glycans. Likewise, we are training very few researchers in the glycosciences. More programs are needed to impart glycoscience knowledge at the undergraduate, ...more »

Aside from a handful of locations around the country, there are no local opportunities for the vast majority of PhD students to learn about glycobiology. A search on NIH Reporter for T32 grants with "glycobiology” reveals two grants (one NCI for cancer cell biology, one NIGMS for pharmacology). Neither of these grants are focused upon glycobiology. In fact, glycobiology is essentially never integrated into any standard ...more »

How do we add communication skills to our training programs to improve scientists’ communication with the public?

One of the major challenges in translating from bench-to-bedside and back is communication: the ability of basic and clinical scientists to understand each other's scientific language to be able to appreciate the importance of the other’s research questions and findings.

Many challenges posted here focus on increasing translation and development of interdisciplinary teams. Diverse backgrounds and epidemiological training makes population and public health scientists ideal candidates to connect teams in different areas of research around translation to human health. While funding exists specifically for career development of physician and pre-clinical scientists, none exists for epidemiologists. ...more »

A critical challenge will be to limit future destabilizing expansion of the number of PhD students and postdoc trainees. Because 75-80% of biomedical PhD students and postdocs now supported by NIH are funded by RO1 and other research funding, if/when research grant budget increase the number of PhD and postdoc “slots” would automatically expand--even if there is no expectation of comparable increases in demand for ...more »

The main therapeutic challenges that remain to be addressed in the field of cardiac arrhythmias generally require the participation of scientific expertises as diverse as physiology, medicine, engineering, chemistry, nanotechnology, material science and others. Today, there is little incentive to assemble such cross-expertise teams. Novel funding mechanisms could reward the time and effort invested in forming cross-expertise ...more »

The challenge I write about is the significant lack of funding for science in NHLBI. There are currently programs to increase the funding of early career investigators and many senior faculty are obtaining continuing renewal.

How will NHLBI keep those in their middle of their career years from dropping out of the biomedical workforce?

Why don’t we have a program that is easy to follow in maintaining at an early age that extends all the way to Senior Citizenship? Culturally diverse staff can improve everyones chances of getting needed care that is multi-cultural.

There is a need to encourage the development and growth of integrated and multi-disciplinary biomedical research skills needed to utilize emerging technology, infrastructure, and paradigms, including the development of competitive research training strategies that embrace the role of multi-institutional and professional scientific organization research collaboration.

Would an NIH trans-IC office of critical care research improve coordination and strategic planning across?

What are the appropriate metrics for investigator performance ("overall quality of their science") that are predictive of future high impact contributions to heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders at specific career stages?