Pandemic Lessons for Research Funding

You don’t have to wait until the annual meeting in December to hang out and talk with ASCB’s Women in Cell Biology (WICB) committee!

We decided this year that it would be important to get together virtually to chat about challenges we’ve faced over the last few years and the changes they have brought to our personal and professional lives. We have all been contending with many COVID-related disruptions to our families, careers, physical and mental health, as well as dealing with gender and racial inequities that have been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

Therefore, we are hosting a short series of virtual panel discussions, to be held throughout the next few months.

The overall theme is “Navigating Science, Life, and Careers in a (Post) COVID World”

Our plan is to bring together panelists from different backgrounds and career paths to share their insights and discuss best practices for our communities to move forward in productive and healthy ways. We will provide opportunities for facilitated discussions of different topics and networking between participants and panelists. Each session is planned for 2 hours with a panel discussion and Q&A for the first ~45-60 minutes. This will be followed by facilitated breakout rooms on different topics to allow attendees to have a more focused discussion and networking time and strategize about ideas for best practices (~20 min). We will then reconvene to summarize breakout room discussions and wrap up.

Research funding is the top priority for the scientific community, and the pandemic has challenged our thinking about key application review metrics such as research productivity, professional development, and mentoring. Join us for a two-hour conversation about these issues, and share your own perspectives on funding challenges, with senior representatives from top cell biology funding agencies. This webinar will include brief presentations from panelists with Q&A, followed by scientist-driven breakout discussions on how we can use the lessons of the pandemic to build better funding and review processes for the future.

In this webinar, you will learn how funding agencies for cell biology researchers are thinking about ways to address pandemic-related challenges. You will also learn how these agencies are working to evaluate and respond to how these challenges affect scientists of different backgrounds and career stages.

Moderators:

Brittany Belin, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Avital Rodal, Associate Professor, Brandeis University

Panelist:

Theresa Good, Division Director, NSF

Michael Sesma, Chief, NIH

Lynne Elmore, Senior Scientific Director, American Cancer Society

Joanna M. Watson, Chief and Program Director, NIH