Office of Education
- Erin Walsh, PhD, Director, Office of Education
- Veronica Harker, Program Coordinator
- Katherine Lamb, Program Coordinator
The goals and objectives of the Office of Education can be summarized as follows: to meet the training needs of intramural scientists, fellows, and students at all levels, the Office of Education recruits and develops academic support programs, contributes to mentoring, evaluation, and career guidance, and creates new training initiatives. Our professional development workshops and activities typically include public-speaking workshops, job interviewing, writing and editorial services for professional school and job applications, grantsmanship workshops, academic and non-academic career presentations, one-on-one counseling, teaching opportunities, and lab-management programs. Additional areas of involvement include programming for career exploration, networking among fellows and alumni, grantsmanship, and the enhancement of fellows’ competitiveness for research awards and future career opportunities, as well as support of tenure-track investigators.
Notable accomplishments of the past year
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Activities of the Office of Education
Our TmT (Three-minute Talks) competition, now in its ninth year, was held in conjunction with ten other institutes: NCATS, NIDCR, NHGRI, NEI, NIDDK, NIDCD, NIAID, NINDS, NIEHS, and NLM. Jong Park, postdoctoral fellow in the Section on Vertebrate Organogenesis, was the NICHD finalist and NIH 1st place winner.
We continued our Graduate Student Talks initiative, established in 2014, which provides the Institute’s graduate students with experience in presenting their thesis research to a non-specialist scientific audience.
An online Annual Progress Review for fellows, developed by the Office and launched in 2016, tracks scientific and career development and progress. As part of the assessments of investigators’ mentoring, the reports by fellows are analyzed and provided to the site visits of the Board of Scientific Counselors. A new Individual Development Plan and Annual Progress Report system for intramural postbaccalaureate fellows was implemented in October 2023.
In September 2023, the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) gave its Mentor of the Year awards to Ryan Dale, Bioinformatics and Scientific Programming Core, in the investigator category; and to Mor Alkaslasi, Unit on Development of Neurodegeneration, as fellow.
The DIR Fellows’ Exit Survey was established in summer 2022 and is actively collecting data on trainee experience feedback and career outcomes, and also serves as an alumni database.
We compiled a valuable list of organizations that accept grant applications from NIH intramural fellows, through both NIH and non–NIH funding mechanisms. It can be found on the NICHD fellows’ wiki site. In FY23, four DIR postdoctoral fellows were awarded the competitive NIH K99/Pathway to Independence Award, and two DIR fellows were accepted into the NIGMS PRAT Fellowship Program for their outstanding research proposals. Also, for NICHD, 11 Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) awards were made for the 2023 (FY24) competition.
The Fellows Intramural Grants Supplement (FIGS) continues to recognize and stimulate grant applications among fellows, and we launched the 7th cycle for our Intramural Research Fellowships (IRFs), a new competitive internal funding opportunity for NICHD postdoctoral and clinical fellows. Its ultimate goal is to promote fellows’ grant writing and to enhance their awareness of various components for an NIH grant application.
The Institute continues its exchange program with INSERM (the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) in France, which provides a unique opportunity for US and French scientists to obtain postdoctoral training with French and US mentors, respectively. Since 2016, up to three second- and third-year medical students from Santa Casa de São Paulo School of Medical Sciences (Brazil) train with NICHD investigators for the Future Researchers Program.
The Fellows Recruitment Incentive Award (FRIA) continues to support investigators who recruit postdocs from populations traditionally under-represented in science.
The alumni group for our NICHD Developing Talent Scholars program, in its 13th year, added three new postbaccalaureate fellows in 2023. The Scholars program focuses on developing talent and supporting trainees’ academic and career progression.
The DIR has continued its collaboration with Howard University for research, training, and mentoring opportunities. In the 2023 spring academic semester, we welcomed a third cohort of undergraduate student mentees from the College of Arts and Sciences into the Biology Secondary Mentors Program. Each student was paired with an NICHD Principal Investigator in the DIR, with whom they will work closely towards developing and executing a research project from their sophomore through their senior years of college. Our first cohort (who started in spring 2020) completed their senior theses and graduated in May 2023; they are now pursuing graduate and medical school training.
Postdoctoral fellows were also given the opportunity to organize and teach our annual seminar series for postbaccalaureate trainees, which entered its 17th year. For the 2023 series, Erin Walsh instructed sessions on the medical-school and graduate-school search and application processes. The 2023–2024 series will also provide sessions on biomedical career exploration and professional development, as well as opportunities for meeting and networking with scientists and physicians.
The 18th Annual Fellows Meeting was held in Washington, DC, on October 27, 2023, and featured keynote speaker Dr. Guoyang Luo (Maternal Fetal Health and Obstetrics and Gynecology, INOVA Health System). The event also included a talk by NICHD Office of Health Equity Program Officer Dr. Erika Barr, and showcased oral and poster presentations by fellows, along with 10 career speaker discussions sessions. The program is developed and run by a fellows’ steering committee, which was chaired by Thien Nguyen in 2023 (postdoctoral fellow, Section on Translational Biophotonics).
The NICHD Connection monthly newsletter continues its focus on mentoring, careers, and academic programs for young scientists, publishing its 161st issue in November 2023 and reaching all members of the intramural division and our alumni.
Contact
For further information, contact Dr. Erin Walsh.
