New federal regulations on financial conflict of interest in research for investigators funded by PHS agencies (including NIH)

We are writing to you regarding new federal regulations about monitoring and mitigating potential financial conflicts of interest in research, also known as promoting research objectivity. The regulations apply to U.S. Public Health Service (PHS)-funded investigators, and those who apply to PHS agencies for funding. As you know, NIH falls under PHS; a complete list of agencies can be found at http://www.usphs.gov/aboutus/agencies/hhs.aspx

Overview The federal regulations require that investigators disclose certain financial information to the university. Rutgers policy sets October 1 as the annual deadline, with initial disclosures due October 1, 2012.

Please note that disclosure does NOT imply that the investigator is conflicted; relationships with industry and the commercialization of technology are encouraged at Rutgers University. Such activities need to be disclosed and conducted in such a way that financial interests do not affect the objective conduct of the research.

The disclosures will be reviewed by a faculty committee, and when there is the need, perceived or actual conflicts will be reduced, managed or mitigated.

Education in the federal conflict of interest regulations is required; a convenient online option is available.
Effective Date: August 24, 2012

Who must disclose? Disclosure is required by Investigators. An Investigator, according to the federal regulations, is anyone involved in the design, conduct or reporting of research. The federal regulations also take family financial interests into consideration – certain financial interests held by the Investigator's spouse or domestic partner or dependent children must also be disclosed.

Investigators who are currently funded by PHS agencies will need to complete disclosure forms, as well as investigators who will apply for PHS funding.

What information is disclosed? Significant financial interests (SFI) related to the Investigator's institutional responsibilities must be disclosed.
SFI's are more deeply defined in the Rutgers policy and disclosure forms found at http://vpr.rutgers.edu/pro but in general SFI's include remuneration from entities outside Rutgers that in the previous 12 months from the date of disclosure, and when aggregated, exceed $5,000, and any equity (no threshold). Royalties from outside entities that do not involve Rutgers must also be disclosed. (Therefore if Rutgers negotiated the licensing agreement, those royalties need not be disclosed.)

"Investigator's institutional responsibilities" means an Investigator's professional responsibilities on behalf of the institution, including but not limited to research, research consultation, teaching, professional
practice, institutional committee memberships, and service on panels such as the IRB. Again, this is more deeply defined in the Rutgers policy.

Specific types of travel must be disclosed; grant-funded travel is NOT included. In general, travel that is sponsored by a state agency, an institution of higher education, an academic health center or research institute need NOT be disclosed. Travel that does not fall under the previous exceptions and is reimbursed or sponsored (ie the traveler may not know the cost of the travel) related to one's institutional responsibilities does need to be disclosed.

Timing of Disclosures Disclosures must be made no later than the time of application for PHS funding, utilizing the online forms at http://vpr.rutgers.edu/pro. For investigators working on projects with active PHS funding, initial disclosures under this new policy must be completed by October 1, 2012, and then annually by each October 1.

Required Education on the Federal Conflict of Interest Regulations NIH provides online training here: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/tutorial2011/fcoi.htm
Training must take place prior to engaging in the PHS-funded research, according to the federal regulations.
Please be sure to print out a certificate of completion at the end of the training session, and to save a pdf file of the certificate.

For More Details: Please go to http://vpr.rutgers.edu/pro for the Rutgers policy and disclosure forms.

Additional Resources:

• NIH has posted an information-rich website here http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/policy/coi/index.htm that includes FAQ's, access to the federal regulations, and case studies.
• Information will continue to be added to http://vpr.rutgers.edu/pro where the policy and disclosure forms can be found now, as well as information about required training.
• Please direct questions to promote-obj@vpr.rutgers.edu

Thank you for your cooperation.

Can clouds transform science? Prof. Manish Parashar

Wolfgang Gentzsch, an independent high-performance computing consultant and chairman of the ISC Cloud Conference series, interviewed Manish Parashar, a speaker for the upcoming ISC Cloud’12 event, which will be held on 24-25 September in Manheim, Germany. Manish Parashar is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University, and founding director of the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2), and of the National Science Foundation Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center (CAC).

Manish, computational and data-enabled science and engineering (CDS&E) has traditionally used dedicated platforms and specialized high-end systems – why should clouds be considered for them?
Clouds are already having a significant impact by enabling enterprises to outsource IT on demand. Clouds enable the outsourcing of many of the tedious aspects of research, such as deploying, configuring, and managing infrastructure, and thus enable scientists to focus on science.
Cloud services improve productivity, facilitate the sharing of research results, and enable the reproducibility of associated computations. This has democratized access to computational and data resources for researchers who don’t have adequate local infrastructure.

What role do you see for clouds in computational and data-enabled science and engineering (CDS&E)?
While clouds can provide many of the same advantages to CDS&E that they provide enterprise IT, it is critical to also look beyond these benefits, and understand application formulations and usage modes that are meaningful in a hybrid infrastructure  with grids, high-performance computing, and clouds.
Cloud computing can support CDS&E applications by providing infrastructure; when, for example, local infrastructure is not available or is insufficient. It can also supplement existing infrastructure to provide additional capacity or complementary capabilities to meet heterogeneous or dynamic needs. Clouds can serve as accelerators, or provide resilience to scientific workflows by moving execution to alternative resources when a failure occurs. Cloud abstraction can alleviate some of the challenges that scientific applications face in current high-performance computing environments.

For the full interview, go here.

Rutgers–Camden genetics researcher receives prestigious award

By Michael Youngkin, for NewsWorks (WHYY, Philadelphia)

"Why do we have two arms and two legs and not three of each? Why do we have five fingers and not six?"

For Nir Yakoby, beginning to answer those questions is now a little easier thanks to the National Science Foundation.

The assistant professor of biology at Rutgers University–Camden has earned the prestigious CAREER Award, which includes $686,544 for research. The five-year award is reviewed and renewed annually based on the scientific progress of the project. The grant will allow Yakoby and his research team to study what happens to cells in the human body on their way to specialization.

"These questions are particularly intriguing since the cells in the human body all contain the same genetic information," he said in a statement. "However, the clear cells in the eyes' corneas are obviously very different from the cells that secrete insulin in the pancreas."
One goal of the award is to integrate academic teaching with research in the lab. In the Yakoby Lab, Rutgers–Camden students study fruit flies to make connections to the development of humans.

A fruit fly will develop an eggshell while still just a developing embryo. The eggshell protects the embryo from the dry environment, while allowing for respiration through tube-like snorkels called dorsal appendages. Just as animals have different numbers of fingers, various species of fruit flies have different numbers of these appendages.

 The same signal that controls the formation of dorsal appendages in the fruit fly is also necessary to define the development of fingers in humans.

Through his CAREER Award, Yakoby proposes to study how changes in that signal allow for the formation of different numbers of appendages. His hope is that the reseach will help to understand tissue pathologies and developmental defects.

[Read more here http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-camden-biology-researcher-wins-prestigious-nsf-career-award 

Rutgers professor wins two U.S. military research awards

Dario Pompili, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, recently received two major awards from the U.S. military for his research on wireless systems to remotely monitor the health of individual soldiers in the field.

Pompili was selected for the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award in March and more recently awarded the DARPA Young Faculty Award. ONR is giving Pompili a three-year, $510,000 grant for his project, “Investigating Fundamental Problems for Real-time In-situ Data Processing in Heterogeneous Mobile Computing Grids.” For a related project, “Towards Real-time Vital Sign Data Processing in Mobile Computing Grids for Advanced Operational Neuroscience,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded Pompili $300,000 over two years.

“The prestigious ONR Young Investigator Award and the DARPA Young Faculty Award are wonderful recognitions of Dr. Pompili’s research work and accomplishments,” said Athina Petropulu, professor and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department. She noted that another assistant professor in ECE, Wei Jiang, also received the DARPA Young Faculty Award. “It is amazing that two out of this year’s 51 DARPA awards came here. We are particularly excited by the promise that our junior faculty hold for our department.”

Pompili, who came to Rutgers in 2007, is co-director of the NSF Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center at Rutgers and a researcher with the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute(RDI2), a new universitywide, multidisciplinary center focused on large-scale computation and data, which is powered by an IBM Blue Gene®/P supercomputer. The director of both centers is Manish Parashar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers.

To read the full article, go here.

NJBIZ profiles Associate Vice President Mammone

As an entrepreneur with a focus on medical devices, Richard Mammone sees Rutgers University tremendously benefiting from the proposed merger with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.


“We’re getting 750 doctors and their inventions … and their research contracts with companies and government from this merger,” said Mammone, associate vice president of innovation and interim executive director of Rutgers’ Office of Technology Commercialization.

“In our university culture, we have professors who work on their inventions in labs, but to work in a clinic is tremendously different. Since UMDNJ is already its own cluster of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, we can tap into that and create an ecosystem where those kinds of companies can start up easily.” As a young engineer, Mammone helped form the company that pioneered Lasik eye surgery. But from that experience, he learned the business side of entrepreneurship the hard way, so he tries to prepare his business and engineering graduate students for every pitfall they could encounter by a starting a venture.

For the full article, go here.

Plugged in to corporate partners

After spending much of April kicking the tires of his university's new supercomputer, Manish Parashar and his students spent last week test driving the new tool.

As eager as he is to start using the computer, the Rutgers University professor is just as interested in handing over the keys. The school hopes the computer will open up a new range of partnerships with industry, and boost the university's reputation and its graduates' marketability.

The computer — an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer known as Excalibur — is the first step in the establishment of the university's new Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute, which Parashar will direct. It was purchased as part of a partnership with IBM, and is roughly 10 times more powerful than any other computer on the school's campus.

Parashar said the computer has a wide range of potential applications. Its computing power has the ability to complete billions of computations at a much faster pace than smaller computers, making it ideal for researchers who need to test millions of scenarios.

Parashar said Rutgers is keen to lend that power to corporate partners, both by handing over the reins and by designing research at a more comprehensive level. To start, Rutgers is targeting the life sciences and financial industries for partnerships, and is creating advisory panels in both sectors to help plan and promote partnership opportunities, and find out what the industries need. The first panel, the life sciences group, meets next month.

Michael J. Pazzani, vice president for research and economic development at Rutgers, said those industries were chosen in part because they're located nearby, and in part because they each have a need for such computing power.

For the full article, go here. 

N.J.'s clean-tech resources in new database

The Garden State is known as a hub for the solar industry, but as new technologies and new approaches to the nation's energy puzzle come on line, state officials are turning their focus toward a more expansive goal — making the state a haven for clean-tech startups. One part of the effort is the launch of a new website, the New Jersey Clean Energy Resource Network. Housed on Rutgers University's site and developed by the Rutgers EcoComplex and the Meadowlands Commission Business Accelerator, the site is designed to be an easy-to-use database bringing together information about incentives and business assistance programs at the state and federal level, from both the public and private sectors.
       Margaret Brennan-Tonetta, associate vice president for economic development at Rutgers, said the site is critical because it promotes the state's clean energy programs — and the notion that New Jersey is eager to help new businesses.

"As incubator managers, we're constantly dealing with business owners who are coming to us for information and with questions, and then we wind up going to all of these different agency websites to try to find the answers to them," she said, adding that she believes the site is the most comprehensive of its kind in the nation.

In making the database, officials compiled more than 300 links to incentives, financing opportunities, incubators and other assistance, as well as information on regulations. The site features a summary of each program, as well as a personal contact, when possible.
The site has been in development for more than a year, and was designed by J.D. Giron LLC, a Web design firm within the Meadowlands accelerator.

Go here for the full article.