May 10, 2017

Director's Column - The Annual Scientific Symposium: Celebration of Our Research Progress by Dr. Tom Sellers

May 4 was my best day of the year, so far. It was a day of scintillating science, dynamic presentations, fascinating posters, social exchanges with colleagues old and new, and the opportunity to meet new team members and stimulate new collaborations. All of this without a single meeting to attend, conference call, or form to sign. Maybe we can start doing this more than once per year?

In case you couldn't tell from the introduction to this column, we had another stellar Moffitt Scientific Symposium last week. Thanks and appreciation goes to Drs. Doug Cress and Jonathan Zager - the co-chairs of the event - as well as the dedicated program committee members (all 15 of them), the event coordinators (Rae Reuille and Angie Reagan), and the many volunteers who worked behind the scene to make it a success. I'd like to give a big shout out to the faculty, trainees and staff for sharing their work in progress, and for creating the excitement through their research ideas and commitment. The event this year built upon the successful script of previous years: a mixture of invited talks by faculty, platform presentations by the highest-ranked abstracts, two poster presentations (necessitated by the 151 posters that turned the SRB atrium into a rather cozy venue) and the keynote presentation by Dr. Scott Antonia as the W. Jack Pledger Researcher of the Year. Somehow the program committee managed to feed everyone between the poster sessions. If we can do that there is no reason why we can't prevent and cure cancer, right? As the afternoon moved from science to celebration, we announced the winners of the Miles for Moffitt pilot funding , mentor awards (Shari Pilon-Thomas, PhD, the Research Mentor of the Year and Michael Jaglal, MD, the Clinical Mentor of the Year), junior scientist partnership awards, and oral and poster presentation awards. The full list of awards can be found on the Symposium website. Nearly 600 votes were cast by attendees for their favorite posters.

The Scientific Symposium is important for a number of reasons. It embodies our mission, and showcases progress at the bench, at the bedside and in the community as we bridge basic, translational, clinical and population science. The structure of the sessions and the intermingling of posters reinforce our respect for all scientific disciplines and value for multidisciplinary collaboration. As busy as we all are, it is important to hit the pause button once in a while to reflect on and celebrate the incredible work that is emerging from this institution. Stopping to look in the mirror and catch one's breath can invigorate the mind and body for the road ahead. Last but not least, having the research community come together creates the opportunity to learn of research going on here that may be complementary to your own, to get inspired with new ideas and directions, and to make new friends among your colleagues. It was personally very rewarding to hear first-hand of new collaborations that were formed as a result of the symposium.

For those of you who missed the event, or missed parts of it, I encourage you to block out your calendar for next year's meeting - May 9, 2018. That invitation goes to everyone at Moffitt, not just those involved solely or partly in research. With our culture, it doesn't seem appropriate to talk about the "clinical side" or the "research side" but rather something like "offense" or "defense." We're all one team. Research is enabled by the clinical practice, and the clinical practice is informed by research. We estimate that there were around 500 people in attendance and it is amazing to share the energy and scientific discovery so broadly. While we are almost certainly going to need a larger venue to house the event , that is one wonderful problem we want to have!

If you attended, the event coordinators would like you to take this quick survey to provide feedback and ideas for improvements.  

Symposium Videos:
AM Session | PM Session 1 | PM Session 2

(NEW) Signals Spotlight: Brian Gonzalez, PhD

(NEW) Appropriations Act and Award Notices

As you may already know, the 2017 Appropriations Act was signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, May 5. Moffitt is expecting revised Notices of Award (NOA) for approximately 15 NIH grants issued while the Continuing Resolution (CR) was in effect. We have been in regular contact with our Grants Management Office (GMO) Specialist at NIH regarding the reduced funding level for the last few months. We know that as soon as they receive approval to do so, NIH will issue revised NOAs restoring CR funding back to the 100% level. We have been assured that this will be done without prompting and as quickly as possible.

When OSR has the NOA in hand, we will process the revision and forward the information to our colleagues in Research Finance so that the impacted budgets can be increased appropriately, and they will notify your Research Financial Analyst. Please note, however, we have also been told that the NOAs to restore funding will take a lower priority to new funding and annual continuations. The GMO is interested in making sure new funds are issued as quickly as possible and those issued under CR should have ample funds for operations in the meantime. OSR will continue to monitor and follow up on awards that need revised NOAs until we have resolution for all of them. We are communicating very purposely knowing that the more we contact NIH about each award, the more we can potentially slow down the process.

If you have any questions, please contact Margaret Fonner, x6519.

(NEW) Research Staff Refresher Course

(NEW) Population Science Newsletter

Certified Effort Reporting Process Update

This month, an upgrade will be made to Lawson to provide an enhanced feature for routing action oriented items, such as the certification of effort reports. It will allow us to improve the delivery of effort reports, as well as how the effort certifier action items are performed. This upgrade will likely occur May 15, though it may be a few days after that.

The upgraded version of Lawson will allow the certifier to receive his or her effort report through email, and the ability to approve or indicate further review is needed directly from the email message. To ensure security surrounding this process when the action item is selected, a prompt will appear so that the certifier can enter their network username and password. The process is developed so that only the user with the appropriate access can perform the action item. If a certifier forwards their effort reporting email to another individual that person will not be able to perform the action item associated with the effort report.

We were also able to provide some aesthetic changes to the effort report to hopefully provide the certifier with more meaningful information.

This enhanced delivery will minimize many of the Internet Explorer issues and problems experienced by MAC users utilizing the Safari web browser. We will provide more information as soon as the Lawson upgrade has been confirmed.

We are very excited about this improvement, which will make effort certification easier.  

Grants and Funding Announcements

NIH Director's Early Independence Award for Exceptional Junior Scientists

Dresner Foundation Myelodysplastic Syndromes Research Fund

Chotiner Pediatric Research Pilot Funding Opportunity