New Investigator Forum Meeting Report
Le Manoir du Lac Delage, Lac Delage, QCOctober 14-16, 2011
Table of Contents
Background
The CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity (III) supports research and helps to build research capacity in the areas of infectious disease and the body's immune system. An important part of this is the training and development of new researchers, to enable them to build a solid foundation for their independent research careers. CIHR and III have a number of programs in place designed to aid investigators at various stages of their careers. Amongst these is the New Investigator Forum, which aims to bring researchers in the early stages of their first academic appointment together with investigators experienced in lab and research team management, grant writing, peer review, knowledge translation, and other challenges young researchers often face.
This year marks the fourth time that III has organized a New Investigator Forum (NIF), and the first time it has been held in the province of Quebec. The participants represent institutions in 8 different provinces, and conduct research in all 4 health research themes.
Meeting Overview
Purpose
- To provide an opportunity for new investigators in the field of infection and immunity to interact with their peers from across the country.
- To develop and enhance the skills required for starting and maintaining a successful research career.
- To inform the Institute of potential opportunities for strategic programs needed to support new investigators.
Objectives
- To bring together new investigators from across Canada in a retreat-like setting.
- To learn about current infection- and immunity-related research activities in Canada.
- To facilitate networking, learning, knowledge sharing, and to promote the formation of new collaborations.
- To provide new investigators with the chance to participate in workshops that cover a range of skills required to establish and maintain a research career.
- To foster an interdisciplinary environment, including all aspects of health research.
Participants
Meeting delegates represented all 4 of CIHR's health research themes (biomedical, clinical, health systems, and population health), and included 75 researchers within the first 5 years of their independent research careers. Participants represented universities or institutions in 8 Canadian provinces. The complete list of attendees, including speakers and workshop leaders, can be found in Appendix 1.
Format
The NIF 2011 was held at the Manoir du Lac Delage in Lac Delage, Quebec. The program included plenary sessions and workshops led by experts working in various aspects of research in infection and immunity, as well as panel discussions and poster sessions to allow for optimal interaction between investigators and to facilitate networking. The full program is included in Appendix 2.
Workshops and Speakers
The NIF consisted of 6 workshops and 3 plenary talks, summarized below.
Workshops
Career Development and Research Management
The Career Development and Research Management session provided new investigators with insight into how to build and maintain their personal research program. The workshop leader, Kathy Barker, has authored two books about research culture. "At the Bench: A Laboratory Navigator" and "At the Helm: Leading Your Laboratory" provide valuable advice on the task of managing self, lab and junior investigators, and the unseen expectations that impede research progress. Her presentation to the Forum included topics such as how to build the type of lab that you want, finding the right people for your team, career planning, common pitfalls that new faculty members face, and potential solutions to typical problems that negatively affect a research environment.
Grant Writing and Peer Review – Part 1
Two speakers gave an overview of the grant writing process and conveyed some of their tips for successful grantsmanship to the Forum participants. Sylvia Kairouz is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University, and currently holds funding from Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) and CIHR. Joaquin Madrenas is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University, who is currently supported by CIHR and the Kidney Foundation of Canada. Dr. Kairouz and Dr. Madrenas both chaired CIHR peer-review committees in the Fall 2010 Open Operating Grants competition. These speakers imparted advice for important points new investigators should emphasize in their application, ideal timelines for grant preparation, general writing and revision tips, designing a realistic budget, the type of supplemental material that should be included in application packages, and how to resubmit an application that was not funded the first time.
Grant Writing and Peer Review – Part 2
To help the Forum delegates to have a better understanding of the peer-review process and how the committees work, mock peer-review panels were organized with actual operating grant applications. Participants were divided into smaller groups and were asked to review two grants, which they had received prior to the panels, according to the CIHR evaluation and ranking scheme. Each panel was led by a researcher with experience in chairing CIHR peer-review committees, and who conducted the smalls groups in the same way that panels would be run. The panel chairs were: Sylvia Kairouz, Joaquin Madrenas, Éric Cohen (Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal), David Speert (University of British Columbia), and Pierre Talbot (INRS – Institut Armand-Frappier). This allowed the delegates to gain valuable insight into the operation of the panels, as well as perspective useful for the preparation of their own grant applications.
Grant Writing and Peer Review – Part 3
Following the mock review panels, participants had the opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the peer-review process with, and ask questions of, the panel chairs and speakers.
Research Funding
A workshop focusing on funding opportunities from CIHR and other agencies and organizations led off the Sunday session. Three speakers provided their own experiences and perspectives on research funding sources.
Emma Allen-Vercoe from the University of Guelph presented her "non-traditional" funding experiences, including support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), charitable foundations, government departments, and provincial health agencies.
Krissy Davidge of the CIHR Knowledge Translation (KT) Branch gave an overview of some of the KT and Commercialization programs and funding tools offered by CIHR. She also highlighted the opportunities presented by the Industry-Partnered Collaborative Research, Collaborative Health Research, and Science-to-Business Programs.
Marc Ouellette, Scientific Director of CIHR-III, outlined some effective strategies for applying to targeted requests for applications, as well as some advice for navigating the opportunities offered by the various federal and provincial funding agencies.
Graduate Supervision
Paola Borin from Ryerson University took Forum participants through an interactive presentation focused on defining and developing roles in graduate supervision relationships. Ms. Borin specializes in the field of faculty development in higher education, and teaches, consults and advises on matters including graduate supervision. The goal of this workshop was to: identify the different roles that supervisors fill in graduate supervision; outline how supervisors and students can mutually define these roles early on, and monitor them throughout their degree; introduce tools to assist supervisors and graduate students to define their roles and monitor progress; and identify strategies for maintaining productive and effective supervisor-student relationships. Several of the tools used as examples during the presentation, such as the Role Perception Rating Scale (RPRS), the Student Profile Proforma (SPP) and the Student Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision (SEPS), were made available to the participants to use in their own research groups.
Speakers
Ian Graham
Ian Graham, Vice-President of Knowledge Translation and Public Outreach gave a presentation on KT at CIHR, and the suite of programs available to investigators. He provided an overview of what knowledge translation encompasses, why it is important to research, and the various types of KT that researchers either may already be engaging in, or may wish to incorporate into future applications.
Thomas Martin Schmeing
At this year's Forum, the Bhagirath Singh Early Career Award in Infection and Immunity was presented for the first time. This award will be awarded annually to an investigator within the first 5 years of their independent research career in the field of Infection and Immunity, with the highest ranking (by percentage) in the Spring and Fall Open Operating Grants competitions. The 2010 recipient, Thomas Martin Schmeing from McGill University, was presented the award by Dr. Bhagirath Singh, the inaugural Scientific Director of CIHR-III. Dr. Schmeing gave a talk on his current research focus: "Structural and Function Studies of Ribosomes and Nonribosomal Peptide Synthetases".
André Veillette
The keynote address was delivered by André Veillette of the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal. He spoke about his research career spanning 25 years, and his work on "Protein-protein Interaction in Immune Regulation".
Poster Sessions
Two poster sessions were held as a part of the Forum, and allowed all of the delegates to present their research programs to their colleagues. Posters in five different sub-categories within the Infection and Immunity field, and provided participants with an opportunity to network with researchers in their own discipline, as well as other Infection and Immunity areas.
Evaluation
At the conclusion of the Forum, participants were asked to complete and evaluation form to relay their experiences to CIHR-III staff. Sixty people completed the survey, a response rate of 78%. Overall, the participants indicated that the workshops offered during the Forum were very helpful for further developing their own research programs. The mock peer-reviewed panels in particular were ranked very highly. The delegates found the forum to be a good opportunity to form connections with new colleagues, and many were planning new research collaborations as a result of attending the Forum. Two-thirds of respondents indicated that they were more likely to engage in interdisciplinary research as a result of attending the Forum, and slightly more found it useful for increasing their understanding of the research programs undertaken in other disciplines. One-hundred percent of the respondents recommended that CIHR-III continue to organize the Forum in future years. A summary of the evaluation results are included in Appendix 3.