Invitation to Present

There will be an opportunity for societies to make a brief (less than 5 minute) presentation offering specific strategies or tactics for enhancing NIH peer review and research support. If you are interested in making a presentation, we ask that you notify Drs. Amy Adams (banya@od.nih.gov) and/or Lawrence Tabak (tabakl@mail.nih.gov) by COB Friday, July 27, with a brief summary of your idea. Depending on the number of organizations wishing to make statements, we may select a subset, thereby avoiding redundancy and ensuring that we keep to the time allotted. We will alert those invited to present, and display the list of presenters at the meeting itself. However, all germane written statements will be captured on the website.

Please note, the majority of meeting time will be devoted to open discussion, so there will be additional opportunities to offer input. Finally, we want to take this opportunity to remind you to respond to the Request for Information on the peer review process (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-074.html ), and ask you to encourage your members to do the same.

In preparation for the meeting, we would like to emphasize that this current study is broader than many past efforts; the goal of this study is to optimize the current system used by NIH to support the biomedical and behavioral research, including the two-tiered peer review, in order to optimize its efficiency and effectiveness. We welcome suggestions about the review process per se, as well as suggestions regarding the structure of our grant mechanisms, how to facilitate review, and how to best reduce the need for our scientists to spend more time on applying for grants rather than doing science. We are especially interested in creative suggestions, even if they involve radical changes to the current approach.