BECON MEETING MINUTES

BECON MEETING - April 20, 2005

Minutes

The NIH Bioengineering Consortium (BECON) met from 3 to 4:30 PM on Wednesday, April 20, in Room 7111 at the Rockledge 2 Building on Rockledge Drive in Bethesda , Maryland . The following text contains the minutes for this meeting.

1. BRP Letters of Intent

About 50 letters of intent were received for the May 20 BRP submittal date.

2. BRP Grantee Meeting

Plans are proceeding for the Fifth BRP Grantee Meeting which is tentatively scheduled for mid-August of 2005.

3. BRG Solicitation

Information that the rewrite of the BRG PA is in progress was conveyed. Current plans are to issue a notice to the “NIH Guide” to extend the current BRG PA (PA-02-011) for another deadline ( June 1, 2005 ) .

4. Team Science Issues

The history of the BSIRTS subcommittee was reviewed and the fact that the committee has so far primarily dealt with the multiple PI issue. The committee now wants to focus on trans-NIH issues, specifically, how do applications of interest to several ICs receive funding from multiple ICs and how should NIH deal with applications on a subject that is not of major interest to any one IC.

5. Future BECON Meetings

BECON members agreed that there should be a meeting dedicated to issues of importance to NIBIB. The possibility of having a meeting focused on interagency issues was briefly discussed.

6. Future BECON Symposium

There was general agreement that BECON should sponsor another symposium, and that the timeframe of June 2006 was considered most appropriate. Potential topics were identified and will be considered at the May BECON meeting.

Next BECON Meeting - The next BECON meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 18, from 3 to 4:30 PM in Room 7111 of the Rockledge 2 Building.