With National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards in hand, six University researchers will:

• Model how the brain extracts patterns from sensory data
• Improve the ability of robots to respond to spoken commands
• Explain how our brain stems help us listen and converse in noisy settings
• Make it easier to operate large scale volunteer computing systems
• Adapt novel imaging to pinpoint “hot spots” on nanoscale devices
• Model how the brain’s entire waste removal system operates

The researchers are Ralf Haefner, assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences; Thomas Howard, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering; Ross Maddox, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience; Sreepathi Pai, assistant professor of computer science; and Andrea Pickel and Jessica Shang, assistant professors of mechanical engineering.

The awards, NSF’s most esteemed recognition for early-career faculty members, provide recipients with five years of funding to help lay the foundation for their future research.

Learn more about the recipients’ research projects.

All National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding applications submitted on or after January 25, 2023 must include a data management and sharing plan. Similar data management and sharing mandates will undoubtedly be issued by other federal agencies (and many other research sponsors) in the near future.

Colleagues across the University are actively working to put systems in place to help faculty and other researchers comply with this policy.

Here are some initial steps that you can do now, before the policy goes into effect on January 25:

• Register for an ORCID today (if you didn’t already do so).
• Become familiar with the NIH policy: https://sharing.nih.gov/.
• Use this template to try drafting a plan for your current work based on the recommended elements or use the DMPTool to create your Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP).
• Search for NIH-supported data repositories.
• Look over the NIH guidance on allowable DMS-associated costs that may be included in grant budgets.  We strongly recommend using a non-modular budget (whenever allowable), and note that for grants submitted on or after Jan. 25, it is permissible to request funds for depositing data in archival repositories, as well as for data deidentification.
• Familiarize yourself with this growing collection of DMS resources from Miner Library.
• Adopt an Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) for your research group, if you didn’t already do so.  We recommend Lab Archives.  URMC Research & Academic IT is now in the process of making this available to our research community.
• Attend an NIH webinar: Diving Deeper into the New NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy on September 22, 1:30-3 pm (EDT).

Learn more here.

Health care workers are turning to improv theater for help in navigating sensitive conversations with vaccine-hesitant patients.

Medical Center researchers have developed a program that combines improv theater techniques with coaching on how to tap into patients’ inner motivations to help health care workers guide their patients toward vaccination.

Nearly 80 percent of health care worker participants in the program, described in a JAMA Arts and Medicine article, felt more confident and able to improve their conversations with patients. And nearly 30 percent believed their patients got the COVID vaccine as a result of the change in their conversational approach.

The Theater for Vaccine Hesitancy program featured one-hour workshops in which members reenacted poorly executed real-world conversations between a provider and a vaccine-hesitant patient. After a short debrief, the team ran the scene again. This time, health care workers in the audience had the opportunity to step into the scene as the provider and change the conversation.

“External motivators like mandates or monetary incentives have not worked for all of our patients and in some cases actually increase mistrust of public health and health care systems,” says Holly Ann Russell, associate professor of family medicine in the Center for Community Health and Prevention. “So, we wanted to coach front line health care workers on how to tap into patients’ intrinsic motivation instead.”

Each Theater for Vaccine Hesitancy workshop kicked off with a primer on Self Determination Theory, reviewing how to support patients’ psychological needs. Attendees were trained to empathize and connect with the patient, acknowledging and expressing interest in the patient’s perspectives and feelings. They were also reminded to respect the patient’s power to make their own decisions, but provide concrete recommendations and specific examples of how getting vaccinated fit with a patient’s value system without preaching or arguing.

Learn more.

Left to right: Susan Blaakman, Laura Calvi, and Sharon Elad.

Susan Blaakman, a professor of clinical nursing and director of the Family Psychiatric Mental Health NP Program, who has been selected to join the American Academy of Nursing’s 2022 class of fellows. The academy selects applicants based on their contributions to advancing the public’s health.

Laura Calvi, a leader at the Wilmot Cancer Institute and the Department of Medicine, who has been voted president-elect of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). Calvi’s research interests include study of the cell and tissue interactions that take place between the bone marrow microenvironment and blood stem cells, where cancer arises. Her team is also investigating treatments that may expand the population of healthy blood stem cells so that older adults, whose marrow is failing, can regain an adequate blood supply.

Sharon Elad, a professor of dentistry and chair of the division of oral medicine at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, who received the 2022 Distinguished Service Award from the International Society of Oral Oncology. The award recognizes her exemplary leadership, meritorious achievement, and significant contributions to research, education, and clinical supportive care in cancer.

A Wilmot Cancer Institute scientist has discovered how gene mutations fuel the growth of bile duct cancer, a rare but aggressive type of liver cancer that has been on the rise in the U.S.

A paper by Aram Hezel, published recently in Cell Reports, is significant because it details how the cooperation of two known cancer genes, Arid1a and Kras, disable tumor suppressor activity. When both genes are mutated — particularly Arid1a — the pathways that usually shut down tumor activity cannot perform.

The goal is to use the data to find drugs that could restore the normal function of a mutated Arid1a, to stop cancer’s growth. The pre-clinical investigation is specific to cholangiocarcinoma, also known as bile duct cancer, which is the second most common type of liver cancer. Learn more.

The Wilmot Cancer Institute is accepting applications for team science pilot studies. Proposals must target competitive multiple principal investigator (MPI) R01 grant applications to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and may involve basic, translational, clinical, or population science research.

At least two Wilmot member PIs are required for each application. Particular emphasis will be given to projects that (1) develop inter-programmatic collaborations (that is, collaborations involving members of at least two Wilmot research programs); (2) are relevant to Wilmot catchment area priorities; and (3) align with the Wilmot strategic plan. Wilmot expects to fund three one-year awards at a level of $75,000 each.

This year, the program features a two-stage application process. In stage 1, brief statements of intent are due on Monday, October 3 at 5 p.m. In stage 2, invited full applications are due on Monday, November 21. Projects are expected to begin on Jan. 3, 2023, and may be eligible for a second year of funding through a competitive renewal application. For more details and application instructions, please download the RFA. Please contact Thom Fogg with questions.