BECON MEETING MINUTES

BECON MEETING – December 17, 2003

Members' Minutes

The NIH Bioengineering Consortium (BECON) met on Wednesday, December 17, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM in Room 6C10 of Building 31 on the NIH Main Campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The following text provides the members' minutes for this meeting.

•  Status of BECON/BISTI 2004 Symposium (Larry Clarke and Peter Lyster)

The external advisory workshop for the 2004 symposium on “Informatics for clinical decision making in the 21 st century” was held on Monday, December 15. The planning committee will develop a proposed agenda and present it at the January BECON meeting.

•  Nanotechnology Activities (Jeff Schloss)

a. Each year, IC budget offices are asked to submit to the NIH budget office their estimates of nanotechnology investments. ICs will receive this request soon.

b. Denis Buxton talked about the NHLBI nanotechnology initiative. NHLBI released a Request for Information in December 2002, and convened a working group that reviewed the responses and made recommendations on applying nanotechnology to heart, lung, blood and sleep (HLBS) research and medicine. The working group report is available at http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/108/22/2737.pdf.

•  Future Presentations to the BECON (Jeff Schloss)

Various groups have proposed to make presentations to BECON, and BECON members may identify groups for which such an opportunity might be appropriate.

•  BECON Initiatives (Jeff Schloss)

Jeff Schloss summarized results of BECON-initiated funding programs (BRP, BRG, K25) over the past year.

•  Locations of Future BECON Meetings (Jeff Schloss)

Due to the construction and parking situation, many people have expressed interest in holding the BECON meetings off-campus.

•  BECON Chair (Jeff Schloss)

Several BECON representatives have been away from their offices and therefore have yet to respond with their IC's preference for the next BECON chair. It is hoped that an announcement will be made in time for the next BECON meeting.

•  Presentation/Discussion on NSTC Research Business Models Subcommittee (Geoff Grant, NSF and Connie Atwell, NINDS)

“The purpose of the Subcommittee on Research Business Models is to advise and assist the Committee on Science and the NSTC on policies, procedures, and plans relating to business models to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the Federal research and development enterprise in a manner cognizant of currently available resources.” Fed. Register August 6, 2003.

Geoff Grant (NSF) and Connie Atwell (NINDS) are leading a government-wide project initiated by the OSTP. The project originates in a charge to OSTP to periodically engage in evaluation of the relationship between the federal government and the academic research community, related to the granting and administration of research funding. Goals include: aligning mechanisms of science with the conduct of science, establishing common practices amongst agencies in the way we try to accomplish the same function (supporting science), and costs and accountability (how the research community is accountable to the funding agency). To implement the study, working groups are composed of federal employees; regional meetings are held to obtain outside input (http://rbm.nih.gov/).