One of 36 images of reviewers at work in CSR's Images of
Peer Review photo exhibit. |
Each year, over 18,000 leading researchers from the scientific community serve on CSR study sections to review the thousands more grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
We want to share their stories so you can know some of the dedicated people who help NIH identify the most promising research for the future. We hope to highlight their insights into the process and what reviewers look for in an application. Applicants may learn how to produce better grant applications, and reviewers--particularly new ones--may learn how to produce more useful critiques. (Requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) |
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Veteran Reviewer Honored for Saving Many Days for CSR
Synthetic organic chemistry came so easy to Dr. David J. Sahn that, while his Yale classmates were busy memorizing equations, he was effortlessly visualizing how the molecules fit together. A graduate school professor saw something special in his young protégé, who spent long, solitary hours in the lab. But the professor worried that Sahn would excel in the lab, and burn out in life. So he advised Sahn to find a way to use his talent and interact with people.
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Extraordinary Reviewer Inspires Annual Reviewer Award
There are many stars in the universe of NIH peer review. Over 31,000 scientists from across the country and globe cast revealing light on the 80,000 grant applications NIH receives every year. Untold sacrifices are made by these researchers so we can find the best applications and ultimately treat/cure and prevent disease. One bright star recently moved many at NIH by her heroic commitment: Dr. Marcy Speer continued to review grants during treatment for breast cancer, and she extended her term as a regular member of CSR’s Genetics of Health and Disease Study Section to make up for meetings she missed during chemotherapy. ... more
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Katrina-Battered Researcher and CSR Reviewer Comes Through
Immunologist Seth Pincus fled Children’s Hospital in New Orleans in the wake, literally, of Hurricane Katrina. He had stayed with the patients in the uptown hospital throughout the August 2005 hurricane. In the chaos and loss of power and other services that followed, he helped get patients moved to safe facilities elsewhere. As the hospital’s research director, he agonized over giving pentobarbital to laboratory rats and mice (so they would not die of dehydration and starvation), as well as leaving behind hundreds of fragile blood and tissue samples. ... more
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Skiing Chairman Hits the Ice But Still Makes Peer Review
If he hadn’t have been on crutches, you might almost imagine Andrew Robertson toeing the ground, Gary Cooper-style, and telling SRA Nuria Assa-Munt, “Aw, ‘twarnt nothing, ma’am.” Just a week and a half after the ski patrol carried him off a Colorado mountain, Dr. Robertson, 46, was hobbling bravely in to chair a study section’s peer review of a program project. He had been showing his two daughters how to ski on Thanksgiving Day when he hit a patch of ice and fell. His ski failed to release and he suffered both a spiral fracture of his tibia and a second tibial fracture up near his knee. ... more
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 | Physician on Call
Flying home to Arizona after two days reviewing NIH grant applications, Dr. Kevin Olden thought his job was done. He relaxed in his seat, soothed by the plane's muffled roar high over the heartland. It was a rare moment, since being a gastroenterologist, teacher, and researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale left him little free time, and reviewing grant applications for NIH had placed further demands on his free time. About an hour into his flight, a man across the aisle suddenly had an apparent grand mal seizure as he and his pregnant wife looked at a birthing book, which contained graphic photos of babies being born. ... more
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