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Appendix B: Cross-Cutting High Impact Initiatives
APPENDIX B:
CROSS-CUTTING HIGH IMPACT INITIATIVES
These initiatives were identified by the research strategic planning working groups as Upstate weaknesses and capabilities, that if developed or enhanced, would have strong positive impacts across the research enterprise. Therefore, these should be the highest priorities for investment and development in the next five years with the highest returns on investment.
#1. Establish a dedicated information technology support core that can meet the growing data, computational and data analytics needs of the research enterprise. This core should jointly report to the CIO and VPR. This includes support for capabilities to perform state-of-the-art Biomedical and Health Informatics research. This was identified as a priority initiative by the Bioinformatics, Cancer, Clinical, Immunity, Mechanisms of Disease, Education and Neuroscience working groups.
• Supporting initiatives: o Solve the data sharing and access issues that result from not being firewalled from the hospital, create campus security levels that are less inhibiting.
o Support cloud and local data storage including an academic data warehouse that supports education research.
o Core should include data scientists and as well as biostats experts to expand the capabilities of the Center of Research and Evaluation (CRE).
o Expertise in machine learning and AI support.
o Expertise in data sourcing, hygiene and analysis for to support Education research.
o Ability to support data integration for the Biobank e.g., de-identified EHR data.
o Support for Image analysis.
o Expand collaboration with the Biomedical informatics labs at Oswego’s Downtown campus.
• Next Steps: A task force to map out and prioritize how we build this over time.
#2. Develop a positive incentive strategy to provide protected time for clinical researchers, identified by all groups as a priority. This would impact all clinical departments but also the basic science departments by creating opportunities for collaborative translational research between basic and clinical researchers.
• Develop a model for supporting compensation for research time.
• Address the cultural issue of negative incentives for engaging in clinical research.
• Recruit more clinical faculty with strong research experience and interest to serve as mentors, positive examples and facilitators of collaborative translational research.
• Establish strong tenure and promotion criteria for clinical faculty that values research productivity.
• Develop research liaisons for clinical and basic science departments that can work, as a group, to develop collaborative translational research initiatives.
#3. Establish Histopathology and Electron Microscopy (EM) Cores. Identified by the Bioinformatics, Cancer, Immunity, Mechanisms of Disease, and Neuroscience working groups as a priority.
• Supporting initiatives in process:
o Chair of Pathology, Dr. Michel Nasr’s plans for developing a histopathology core that supports the diverse needs of research faculty.
o Establishment of a preferred vendor status for Histowiz to meet histopathology needs while Dr. Nasr builds his core.
o EM core is in the process of being established by the office of the VPR.
• Next Steps-Research community should continue to advocate for and consult with Dr. Nasr for the development of an in-house histopathology core.
#4. Continue to expand the Biobank including coupling banked samples to de-identified genome sequence and EHR data. Identified as a priority by the Bioinformatics, Cancer, Clinical, Immunity, Mechanisms of Disease, and Neuroscience working groups.
• Supporting initiatives o The Cancer Biobank administered by Dawn Post should be expanded as an institutional biobank, including to support Dr. Andras Perl’s needs. o Expanded whole genome sequencing instrumentation in the SUNYMAC. o Acquire Biobank software that will facilitate data integration of genome sequence and HER data. o Glioma Biobank of Neurosurgery and Dr. Mariano Viapiano. o Couple education data to EHR data to be able to measure the patient outcomes of educational interventions, programs and training provided to health care workers.
• Next steps: coupling biobank and genome sequencing data to the EHR is a very heavy lift and will require the parallel development of the research-dedicated IT team. The current working group for this should continue to meet as a task force to develop an implementation strategy. The current group includes:
Thomas Schulze, Vladimir Kuznetsov, Chunyu Liu, Sam Carello, Gennady Bratslavsky, Mary Lou Watson,
Sharon Brangman, Scott Elia, Matt Elkins, Steve Faraone, Patricia Forken, Steve Glatt, Mary Ann Gross,
Frank Middleton, Andras Perl, Dawn Post, Mark Schmitt. This task force should also investigate whether a partnership with the SUNY Buffalo Bioinformatics and Health Informatics teams may be a viable mechanism to build this capacity.
#5. Improve the research institutional profile to facilitate recruitment of research faculty, post- docs, students and staff. There needs to be better advertising and branding of the research mission including the web and social media presence. This was identified as a deficiency by all working groups. In many institutions, there are dedicated people in The Office of Research that supports research communications, the website, social media for research and research events.
• Short of a dedicated person in RA, a team will need to work with public relations (Darryl Geddes) and marketing and communications (Leah Caldwell) to develop and support a social media strategy to promote research success and to promote and increase the profile of research events sponsored by Upstate.
#6. Strengthen the Postdoc Program in numbers and quality as recommended by all working groups. This will positively impact all research units on campus.
• Improve and expand our postdoc recruiting efforts/strategies.
o Collaborative effort between the VPR, Dean of COGS and marketing and communications.
• Support our existing postdocs in obtaining more F32 grants. This will be required for us be competitive to apply for T32 postdoc training grants, an aspirational goal of several working groups.
Collaborative effort between the VPR and Dean of COGS • Establish a mandatory career development and mentoring program for postdocs including the development of a required postdoc Professional Development Plan template.
o Initiative internal to COGS with support provided by the office of the VPR as needed.
#7. Develop formal mentoring programs to develop and support the success of our human capital.
• For Basic Science Assistant Professors.
o VPR Office should work with the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Faculty Development, Basic Science Chairs, Center and Institute Directors to develop a strategy/plan.
• For Clinical Assistant Professors.
o VPR Office should work with the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Faculty Development, Clinical Chairs, Center and Institute Directors to develop a strategy/plan.
#8. Develop pipeline and development programs in part to increase the diversity of our research faculty and research work-force.
• Supporting initiatives
o Establish URM pipelines/articulation agreements with high schools, Universities, and programs (such as On Point for College) that have and support diverse student bodies.
• Collaborative effort between the Dean of COGS, VPR and Student Affairs.
o Submit and obtain a Post-Baccalaureate Research and Education (PREP) grant from the NIH.
• Will require a one-year self-funded pilot that is currently being worked on by the VPR and Dean of COGS.
o Develop a Master’s degree in research option for medical students that would add an extra year to their program and a pathway to obtain the dual MD/PhD degrees.
• Collaborative effort between the Dean of COM, Vice President for Academic Affairs, The Director of the Office of Research for Medical Students, and VPR.
o Develop a Master’s degree or certificate in research for residents that would require an additional year in their residency programs to provide for a meaningful research experience.
• Collaborative effort between Clinical Chairs, Resident Program Directors, GME Director, the Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education Research, VPR and Director of Clinical Research Initiatives.
o Submit and obtain funding to support diversity at all levels including: NIH’s Bridges to the Doctorate Research Training Program (T32), Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Program: FIRST Cohort (U54), and diversity focused career development awards (K99/R0, K01).
#9. Create a web-based resource on the Research Administration website that readily allows the user to identify the research and innovation expertise of our faculty. The purpose would be to: 1) Facilitate in-house collaboration, 2) Inter-institutional collaboration, and 3) Industry engagement and possible contract consulting relationships between research labs and industry partners (for example, the Cambridge model).
LOWER IMPACT CROSS-CUTTING INITIATIVES
#10. Enhance the capabilities and expertise within the core facility for drug development and discovery.
#11. Enhanced capabilities and expertise in the Vector Biology Lab
• In vivo imaging in the VBL
• High performance imaging in the VBL
