Francis Collins
Mapping the Brain's 'Symphony'
06/11/12 13:25 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Francis Collins at the NIH in his new blog discussed the Human Connectome Project, an NIH-funded effort to map all the neural connections in the human brain. He noted that whereas before only an isolated region of the brain might have been analyzed, recent advances in computer science, math, imaging, and data visualization can now allow researchers to study the human brain as an entire organ. S. Pelech is astonished that "the Human Connectome Project, has set out to map the brain’s neural connections in their ENTIRETY." He questions whether the project proponents truly appreciate the scale of such as proposal and whether the knowledge gained from such an undertaking is really worth the costs. Read More...
Francis Collins' Funding Problem
13/08/10 15:27 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Despite possible cutbacks in the NIH's 2012 budget, its Director Francis Collins plans to launch an award in 2011 that would make it possible for promising young investigators to skip the postdoc stage and give them five years of funding to open their own labs. S. Pelech questions whether allowing these recent graduate students to skip the postdoc stage and to providing them with 5 years of funding to open their own labs is really a faster way to waste money and doom a promising young investigator to early failure. Read More...
Collins 'a Guy in a Hurry' for Translational Research
14/12/10 20:40 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, is eager to establish the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, despite the extra budgetary considerations, so that the agency can plug certain therapeutic development holes left open by pharma, such as for rare and neglected diseases. S. Pelech cautions that this proposal will most likely further exacerbate an already very difficult funding situation for basic researchers in the U.S. based on past experience of Canadian academic researchers with the creation of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. Read More...
NHGRI's Early Independents
01/12/11 17:28 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The National Human Genome Research Institute profiled four of its intramural postdoctoral fellows and three extramural researchers that it funds, all of whom recently received National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Awards. S. Pelech comments that it's interesting that two of the seven awardees of the NIH Pathway to Independence Awards are or were post-doctoral fellows with the Director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins. Read More...