Special Exhibits on Resources for Intramural Research

Representatives from the following groups will staff information tables between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m. in the central corridor of Building 10. In addition to this, in the South Lobby, the Green Labs Fair will host vendors with products to help laboratories make the transition to more environmentally benign practices. And the NIH Library will highlight its various services, including new virtual reality demos geared toward biomedical research, in the NIH Library itself between noon and 4:00 p.m.

The NIH Blood Bank will provide information on all the various types of donations available for patient care along with research opportunities that help investigators discover disease cures. More information at https://bloodbank.nih.gov.

NIH’s Center for Information Technology (CIT) is focused on managing NIH’s core IT infrastructure and providing enterprise-level information technology systems, solutions, and services to all 27 ICs and the NIH Office of the Director. The exhibit will offer visitors the opportunity to engage with CIT initiatives and offices with a particular focus on the following:

• Biowulf, NIH’s supercomputer and the largest of the HPC resources, makes it possible for the Intramural Research Program (IRP) community to pursue research questions that were previously beyond its reach. As a testament to its raw computing power and cutting-edge capabilities, Biowulf is the first supercomputer completely dedicated to advancing biomedical research listed among the top 100 most powerful computers in the world. Thanks to Biowulf, the NIH IRP community is now one of the world’s leaders in the biomedical computing space, providing its investigators with a world-class high performance computing environment for advancing biomedical science.
• The STRIDES Initiative (Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability) is designed to enhance biomedical discovery and improve efficiency through new digital data management strategies that contribute to NIH efforts to develop and sustain a modern biomedical data ecosystem. Through partnerships with commercial cloud service providers (CSPs), the STRIDES Initiative provides a cost-effective way for biomedical researchers at the NIH and at NIH-funded institutions to access rich datasets and the most advanced computational infrastructure, tools, and services provided by CSPs.
• Mobile Collaboration tools are available to help NIH staff work from any office or remote site and engage with colleagues across campus, across the country, and around the world. CIT provides file sharing tools—including Box, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online—and mobile technology “solutions” across the NIH ICs.

Need to reach more patients for your study? The NIH Clinical Center Office of Patient Recruitment offers services to NIH intramural researchers. A team of innovative Recruitment Specialists support researchers to enroll patients and healthy volunteers. The office provides strategic recruitment campaigns that include social media marketing, public service announcements, posters, and community outreach initiatives. We’ll focus on finding the patients so you can focus on the science for the patients. Get started today: Stop by the table to talk to recruitment specialists and pick up an application to complete and submit to prpl@cc.nih.gov. More information at http://intranet.cc.nih.gov/recruit/opr.html.

The NIH Intramural Research Program’s Collaborative Research Exchange (CREx) is an online, private marketplace offering a vast catalog of research services to facilitate communications between IRP scientists and internal cores as well as external vendors, enabling IRP scientists to easily engage with innovative resources and technologies. CREx includes more than 150 NIH IRP Cores, 25+ Trans-NIH Cores, and about 18,000 external scientific vendors. Users can expect to receive at least three quotes within a week of submitting a service request, resulting in cost savings due to this direct competition. There are plans to link CREx with POTS (Purchasing Online Tracking System) to further simplify the procurement process. The program is overseen by two Committees, namely the CREx Steering Committee (chaired by Dr. Glenn Merlino, NCI) and CREx User Committee (chaired by Dr. David Goldstein, NCI). More information at https://NIH.Scientist.com.

NCBI’s Conserved Domain Database (CDD) is a protein annotation that consists of a collection of well-annotated multiple sequence alignment models for ancient domains and full-length proteins. These are available as position-specific score matrices (PSSMs) for fast identification of conserved domains in protein sequences via RPS-BLAST. CDD content includes NCBI-curated domains, which use 3D-structure information to explicitly define domain boundaries and provide insights into sequence/structure/function relationships, as well as domain models imported from a number of external source databases (Pfam, SMART, COG, PRK, TIGRFAMs). Our resource is currently being used to maintain consistency and accuracy in the naming of proteins. More information at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cdd.

The Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) is a non-profit foundation committed to promoting the productivity and attractiveness of life on the NIH campuses. Celebrating its 60th year anniversary in 2019, FAES has evolved into a truly dynamic organization, offering a wide range of services, including:

• Academic credit-bearing scientific and non-scientific courses
• Advanced studies programs in bioinformatics and data science, public health, and technology transfer
• Conference management and training services, as well as other exciting events relevant to the NIH community
• Housing, insurance, and other services to facilitate and support the work commitment of Fellows and Trainees
• The FAES Bookstore and Gift Shops, which offer quality merchandise and services to foster a scholarly, spirited workforce
• On-campus conference rooms, lounges, and suites, as well as our off-campus Social and Academic Center, which offer logistical solutions for groups looking to host meetings, parties and more
• Sponsorship of music and concert series, as well as diverse NIH symposia, lecture and seminar series

Stop by at the Research Festival for more information and giveaways, or visit our website at https://faes.org.

The Sustainable Laboratory Practices Working Group (SLPWG) organizes the NIH Green Labs Fair to encourage scientists and laboratory staff to interact with the vendors and NIH staff to learn about the energy-efficient instruments, less-toxic chemical alternatives, environmentally friendly packaging materials, NIH environmental programs, and various laboratory greening practices. The SLPWG is part of the NIH Environmental Management System outreach program to promote environmental stewardship and protect the environment and human health.

* Event takes place in the Building 10 South Lobby from noon to 2:00 p.m.

Interested in adding a third dimension to your two-dimensional data, via virtual reality or 3D printing? Need a crash course in bibliometrics, bioinformatics or data management? Want information about our informationists? If so, please come to the NIH Library in Building 10 during the afternoon of the NIH Research Festival, on September 11. We will be highlighting all of the Library’s services to the NIH research community. We offer far more than just journals!

At this year’s NIH Library Technology and Research Services Showcase, will once again be featuring virtual reality demos, only this time with new “must-see” VR software directly applicable to your research. This will include Nanome, an atomic, molecular and protein visualization, and two Body VR experiences: Journey Inside a Cell and Anatomy Viewer. Experts will be on hand to help you translate your cellular and subcellular images into the VR platform, too. Come watch people in VR googles grabbing at nothing yet walking away with so much. Other highlights include information about free 3D printing, classes, and software; our Technology Hub, which includes a digital production studio; manuscript editing and translation services; “next-level” database searches, such as Scopus and Web of Science; myriad training opportunities; and, oh yeah, journals journals journals in all their glory.

* The Showcase runs from noon to 4:00 p.m. The NIH Library is located near the South Lobby of Building 10. More information at https://nihlibrary.nih.gov.

The Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum (ONHM) documents, preserves, and interprets the history of the NIH. ONHM uses its collections of objects, photographs, oral histories, and documents to create various products explaining the achievements of NIH researchers and biomedical concepts. These products include physical and web exhibits and publications. ONHM also answers inquiries from the general public, government representatives, and other NIH staff and works with other NIH institutes and offices on projects such as the marking of anniversaries. Office staff also advise people on what to do with photographs, scientific instruments, and documents and works with other government entities to preserve them. More information at https://history.nih.gov.

The Office of Research Services (ORS) provides a comprehensive portfolio of services to support the biomedical research mission of the NIH. Some examples of the diverse services ORS provides include laboratory safety, security and emergency response, veterinary resources, the NIH Library, events management, travel and transportation, visual arts and multimedia, relevant services for foreign scientists, and many more programs and employee services to enrich and enhance the NIH worksite. More information at https://www.ors.od.nih.gov.

The mission of Technology Transfer at National Institutes of Health (NIH) is to facilitate partnerships with a wide array of stakeholders, and effectively manage the inventions conceived by scientists working at the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In doing so, NIH Technology Transfer supports the larger NIH mission to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. Working on behalf of the NIH and the CDC — all agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Technology Transfer offices across the NIH apply responsive, and sometimes creative approaches to meet the needs of all parties involved, operating with a goal of moving scientific research and discovery forward for the benefit of public health.

Technology Transfer at NIH:

• Protects U.S. intellectual property and the discoveries conceived by NIH and CDC intramural researchers. This includes working with researchers to determine if an invention warrants patent protection, overseeing the filing of Employee Invention Reports (EIRs), and coordinating the patent filing and prosecution process.
• Serves as a bridge through marketing and communications, connecting the inventive discoveries made by scientists in the NIH and CDC research programs to commercial partners with the capability of developing these technologies into products and services to benefit public health. Without technology transfer, the full potential of these inventions would not be realized, and the public would not receive the full benefit of these biomedical discoveries.
• Facilitates partnerships with outside parties to allow for collaboration.
• Negotiates licenses and collaborative agreements such as Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) to ensure the timely development of federal technologies that contribute to society by driving economic growth and productivity; These collaborations leverage the strengths of each institution to advance basic and clinical research objectives.
• Monitors the development of these technologies to ensure commercialization milestones are reached, products are brought to the market, and royalty fees are paid.
• Facilitates the transfer of thousands of research materials and data into and out of NIH.

More information at https://www.ott.nih.gov (Central Office) and https://www.ott.nih.gov/tdcs (Institute Offices).

This page was last updated on Monday, March 15, 2021