Presenter
James Churchill, Ph.D.
Ashlee Van’t Veer, Ph.D.
NIMH Training Team
Goal
This is a re-issue of a long-standing R25 program announcement that aims to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research needs. To address this goal, this concept is specifically focused on courses for skills development. Courses are expected to facilitate the development of a cadre of investigators with the requisite scientific research skills to advance the mission of NIMH. Each short course is expected to include both didactics and hands-on research experiences. Participants are limited to graduate/medical students, medical residents, postdoctoral scholars, and/or early-career faculty. Proposed course content is expected to enhance the participants’ professional development and to foster their career trajectory towards independent mental health research.
Rationale
Mental health research has seen extraordinary changes with the rapid development of new and
increasingly complex tools, techniques, and approaches. These developments have the potential to
continue or increase in pace over the coming years, as the next generation of tools, technologies, and
resources are being developed via programs like the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative
Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative. There is thus a growing need for individuals to learn cutting-edge
research methods and incorporate them in their research. Short courses provide a unique opportunity
to enable the rapid and widespread dissemination of new methods and approaches. Applications will be
encouraged that develop, implement and evaluate creative and innovative short courses that would
provide education in state-of-the-art research skills (e.g., tools, techniques, approaches) important to
fulfill the objectives of the current NIMH Strategic Plan for Research. Support for courses to enhance the
acquisition of specific research skills during the formative stages of a research career would thus help
ensure that a pool of highly trained scientists is available in adequate numbers and in appropriate
research areas to advance the mission of NIMH. In support of the NIH policy on enhancing the rigor and
reproducibility of NIH-supported research through robust study design and reporting (NIH Rigor and
Reproducibility ; see also NOT-MH-14-004 ), the principles underlying rigorous and reproducible research
are expected to be incorporated throughout a proposed short course. Participants are expected to
obtain a strong understanding of the requirements of experimental rigor and how to build such
processes into their research projects. Additionally, courses are expected to incorporate education in
quantitative reasoning, experimental design, statistics, and analytic techniques appropriate to the
content and duration of the proposed course.
