 Okay, so next up is Lisa Brooke, Program Director and Division of Genomic Sciences, to take you through the Genomic Innovator Award concept. Okay, so this is what we're going to be talking about, a potential new program here. And the motivation is, as you all know, that genomics is a very interdisciplinary field. There's a lot of consortia, large research groups, and a lot of really good people are in those groups, but they're not necessarily first author or last author, because there's a lot of people in the two to the 99 numbers. And yet on the other hand, academic career advancement is frequently based on individual achievements. In addition, the 21st Century Cures Act encourages NIH to provide programs to invest in the next generation of researchers, and to promote opportunities for new researchers and earlier research independence. So I will say, some of you might remember, we discussed this three years ago, and the concept I'm presenting here incorporates the advice that you provided last time. So the aims of this program are to support highly innovative work in genomics, to support creative investigators who participate in consortia or similar large research groups who are early in their careers and who've shown the potential to make substantial contributions to the field of genomics. The idea is to help such people become independent investigators, so that they're not starting off as established investigators, but it's a way to help them get recognition and to develop their careers. So there's two points of focus here. One is on the career growth. Applicants should not... Just like early-stage investigators, applicants should not have an R01-level award already. So that's one thing, but the other thing is that, unlike some other programs like this, they will be eligible to get other research grants, either from NHGRI or from other institutes or agencies. So the focus is really on the investigator. This is a people-not-projects type of program we're talking about here. That means that applications will include some aims. They do have to describe what's part of science they're interested in doing, but it won't be the very detailed aims of like a regular R01. So the applicants will need to demonstrate their contributions to team science, to their consortia or to their large research groups. And frequently, people in those consortia know who these people are, so even though they may not be the major author on papers, people, the leaders of those groups or other researchers will know who they are and will able to write recommendations. So the idea is that even if they can't show first or last author publications, that other people will be able to vouch for them. So the idea is that they'll have a track record and a promise for advancing genomics and recommendations will help a lot to make that clear. There are at least seven other institutes that have these people-not-projects type of programs. These range a lot. Some of them are older, like the Director's Innovator Awards, where there's a focus, again, on creativity for all of these. Okay, thanks. So creativity is important for all of these, but some of these aim at early stage investigators, some of them aimed at senior investigators. So there's various types of programs here. As Eric was saying, there's various sorts of experiments going on. So the idea with the review is that there would be one receipt date per year. It would be an NHGRI review group that would evaluate applicants head-to-head. Evaluations would be based on two things. One would be the proposed work, the merit, innovation, and potentials for substantial contribution to genomics research. And then the other, of course, is the applicant themselves, that the promise and track record of creativity, productivity, and impact. So the idea of the funding is that it would be up to 300,000 direct costs, which is roughly 500K total cost per year, two awards per year, each award for five years. So this would ramp up to supporting 10 people a year for about $5 million a year. So that's the outline of the program. We have some people that want to start to discuss it, like Carol. So yeah, I'll just say a couple things. So one of the things that I was originally really, really supportive of this, but now I've sort of stepped back and said, so when you have these large consortia with many, many people on the author list, some of those folks have as an aspiration to go on to an independent research career. Many of those folks want to go on to senior staff scientist careers that aren't your traditional lab heads, but they still want to have some flexibility to do their own creative work, but they themselves might not be what we would consider a traditional PI. And I think that this funding mechanism was really aimed at the people who want to go on to more traditional track records and be heads of academic labs. So in that case, my question is, are there real, we all have anecdotal data probably, but are there real solid data that show that this is a real problem in genomics that people in those, that have been part of those big projects, what fraction of them that want to go on to independent careers actually can't because of not being senior or first author? Is it really a big problem? Or would we do better to actually have a mechanism that funds kind of those senior staff scientists that are often doing a lot of the innovation driving these big collaborative projects but don't themselves necessarily want to go on to a full independent career, but yet bring innovation and intellectual value to these large projects? So I guess I'm sort of stepping back and saying, is it as big a problem as we thought it was a couple of years ago? Do we have the data to support that? Or could we actually get a bigger value for the same amount of money by funding a different population of people that fall into this mix? Okay, thanks Rudy. Yes, so first of all, I fully support the idea of trying to re-enfranchise junior investigators. And I think like we were hearing maybe in some of Carol's remarks this morning a bit in the discussion was what's a little bit off-putting about this as for lack of a better word is you must be a member of a certain club. Even if we understand the intent, I get worried about the junior investigators who are part of that club actually and how we can enfranchise them because in fact it's really easy to get lost and miss the boat if in fact there's a boat that's launched and jumpstart your career outside of those consortia. And that's also a worry, I would argue, for which we have no data. So I wonder if we can soften that requirement which would then put me in full support of this thing. So the difference between when I've been planning a new course, so courses are on my mind, the difference between making linear algebra a course requirement versus a recommendation or something. You could certainly craft language that makes it clear this is meant for a certain purpose to encourage scientists in the middle of these large papers without actually making it a requirement would be one thought. But that's just trying to solve a problem that I think is there which is I really do worry that we're creating clubs inside of clubs and that's the wrong direction. Okay, I've got Jay, I've got Val, I've got Aviv on the phone and Raphael and Brent. So I'll just start by saying I'm super positive about the program. I think the direction that you headed in was like you said with council input from a few years ago. And on this last point that Trey was making, I think Carol touched on too, I think my head has gone back and forth a little bit, but I'll just try to make the counter argument for why it should be a little more or in support of it being a little more focused on a particular subset or club or whatever you want to call it. And there are mechanisms for junior people, right? You know, they get a bump on their pay line. We've got the new innovators program, right? There's a set of mechanisms and I think the intention here was not to replicate those other mechanisms but rather to try something different, right? And I've certainly sat on study sections and reviewed job applications in the context of faculty searches where I do think that even people who are at the very front of consortia papers are disadvantaged relative to people who have not been part of those things. And they're often terrific people but it's just hard to disentangle contributions and that kind of thing and it does put them at a disadvantage. And I would hope that the intention here is not to create a program that allows them to contribute more to the consortia but tries to help them break out a little bit and do something on their own and that kind of thing. So again, it's anecdotal, there's no data but my sense is that there is a need here and I think one way of thinking about this would be to try and keep it a little bit open at the beginning, not too restrictive and just see what comes in and then shape it a little bit more as the years go by depending on what kinds of applications you get. Yeah, so I've read this several times and each time I read it I like it better. So I want to speak out in favor of it. I understood Trey and Carol's points and I agree with Jay's points as well. But it has certain words in here that actually do make it quite broad. Like I said before, research consortia or similar groups. So I think that's broad and I think leaving broadness in there would do what Jay said, at least initially being able to do the experiment and see what comes in. So I actually like that. There's other words in here that I think are interesting. And I started thinking who's going to apply for these things? Are they going to be faculty member, junior faculty member that are buried within a consortium or are they going to be also senior postdocs who have contributed quite a bit? And who should it be? And in thinking about that there's a phrase in here there needs to be shown commitment of the institution. And so I think in that sense commitment by the institution for me would be they've already hired the person as a faculty member. And so it's not going to be a competition among postdocs, which I don't think it should be. And there's also some refining statements in here that I think keep it broad. For example, it says it's intended to support highly innovative works on problems in genomic by creative investigators. I think really the refining word there is genomics, important questions in genomics. And I think because of that people could apply from research groups that aren't necessarily genomics research groups. They could be research groups working on a disease or something. But then they've got very good genomics people that get buried in there. And I think it would bring those type of people out. I didn't have another idea or two, but I like the size. I think this ramping up to a steady state potentially of 10 is enough to really have an impact. I also like the concept that it's an opportunity for NHGRI to open itself up to having more R01s, which has been somewhat of a criticism in the past. So I think it's a good experiment in that sense. And then one final thing on page two of the concept, there's a paragraph of a relationship to ongoing activities. And it lists five different things that NHGRI supposedly does to support early stage investigators. And I throw that out as a reminder to NHGRI to continue to do those things, or if you're going to have them in there, make sure you have the data to support that you do them. Okay, Steve, I've got Aviv, Raphael, Brent, now Steve and Mark. Okay, Aviv, go ahead. To echo and emphasize the point that Carol made about staff scientists, I think they're an important constituency, especially in genomics. There's a lot of genomic research that actually relies on staff scientists. And that does relate to the points that were made about institutional commitment. Those people will have to have principal investigator status and committed institutions, but it is important that the RFA or the general documents in the end do not sound as though that a faculty position is the only legitimate path for it, because I think most of the people who actually are more likely to be quote-unquote varied in those offerings without any other paper that compensates for that as a first author or more prominent position are actually staff scientists. And a lot of them carry genomics research that we all rely on for decades or more, and yet they never have independent funding to really support their own independent search program, and that's the key. And that would actually work well also with this level of funding source. So I think while it's important to support early career scientists that are starting faculty positions, there are more, there's much more flexibility of opportunities there, and it's important that the staff scientists will get an opportunity through this as well. Well, I like the first bullet point. It's great. I support highly noted work in genomics. The last one. And I like the second one except for the first bullet. So I guess what I would suggest is that to achieve the first one is that you fund whoever you think would achieve that aim and can't use the current mechanism. Because as Jay pointed out, there's already current mechanisms. If you are creative and you can write an hour one or whatever it is, then you use that. But if there's for some reason that doesn't work for you, and one of them could be because you're a staff scientist in a consortia, then you apply for this. But I would not be restrictive at all in terms of the groups or clubs or whatever it was called earlier. Make sure I understand. You don't like the requirement to be in a consortium. That's what you're, or any large groups, it should be wide open. So I would switch that to the, it's for people who can't use the current mechanisms. Okay. That would be my suggestion. To this point, Jay. So to that point, I mean, I like that idea. And just to shape that a little more, I mean, you could, you could imagine just having some substantial section, a half page or something like that where they had to justify why they were systematically, you know, it's not that they're not eligible necessarily because you obviously have to have eligibility to apply for a grant. But why more conventional or other mechanisms for new investigators would not work for them or they would be disadvantaged? I'll say there's two aspects to this. One, as discussed here, is the consortium or group membership. The other is having minimal set of aims. So that hasn't really been discussed, but it's sort of, it's people, not projects. You know, some of what's been discussed, it could be open up to anybody who can't apply for like a regular R01 in some sense. But do you care about the specificity of the aims? Or do you want just an R01 that's available a little more broadly than regular R01s? I think I speak for a lot of people. I think we all were very excited about the people not aims idea. People not aims. At the same time, you got to, you got to say something, right? You got to, you got to have a, it's got to be, I mean, like every, every, yeah. Okay, yeah. So I'd just like to echo a lot of what's been said. I mean, so as somebody who's been in consortia and been in the past and currently trying to recruit people like this, I think there is a need for supporting people on those. Because not everybody in those consortia rises above to the superstar. Those people are easy to recruit. It's the sort of second batch. That being said, I do worry about the club of the clubs. I think that's a bad issue to put forward as a requirement. So I'd say these people could be part of consortia, but it's not, I would say it shouldn't be a requirement. I would rather support genomic innovators regardless of their background. And the thing I like about this, which distinguishes it from a regular R01 is the person, not the project. And if everyone's just competing for R01s, I mean, there's no set number of R01s that are funded, but you're then competing with everybody else at the same time. This is sort of set aside funds for new junior investigators. To that point again, Jay. A little bit at that point. I think in just two points. One is that I think it's important that either in the letters or in some other way that it be made very clear that whatever funds are being committed are truly for this person to do whatever the heck they want to do and aren't going to get sucked up by virtual there being a staff scientist in a mega lab or part of one of these consortium that is going to kind of assert that money. So I think that's one reason why it would be important to have some aims laid out so you can actually say that these are for doing something distinct from what your broader lab or your consortium is focused on. And I guess to that, maybe on a similar point, one can make an argument. I think the levels at which you're funding are fine, but I can also imagine an argument for saying these people are also part of other things, whether they're consortia or other projects. And so you can imagine funding 200 or 250 and being able to use the money to fund more people. If this is an experiment. To Brent's point. If you open it up to everybody, then the first authors on those papers are going to look the best to the study section and they're going to get the funding so you're going to not serve these people if that's the goal. I do want to speak to what Mark just said because that was my concern. Part of the last time we discussed this at council and with some of the subsequent follow-up discussions that's been amongst staff was this idea, could we use this opportunity to reward the team science-oriented scientists who doesn't come in and compete with first author of publication and so forth. And if we open it totally wide up, are we afraid that, you know, I'm sure we'll get fantastic people, but we won't have quite done the unique maneuver of trying to enrich for people that otherwise would, when they go head to head, are not the ones getting the grants, maybe not the ones getting the faculty position. So that was the attempt. I also would point out that there's only two of these a year, even at a total, you know, we're not going to totally move the earth on this. We're too small of an instant. And so the idea was, again, from the last discussion was, is there a niche that we could make a unique contribution compared to other efforts going on at NIH? And one idea was the team science-oriented investigator that otherwise sort of gets lost in the crowd. Is there any language in here that would prevent those first authors of consortia papers from applying from this? Because I don't actually think... They can't have gotten another R01, but I don't know if you necessarily, I mean, I would take the first author of the middle up there for, you know, if they're a better person, right? Like, that shouldn't be a disqualifier. I've got Steve. Then did you give up your slot, Mark? Another point. Steve, Mark, Jeff, Jonathan, anybody else in the queue? Steve. So when I first read this, I actually got quite confused on this point was, I understand that you want to support people, not necessarily projects. But I sort of got confused that it seemed awfully restrictive to a certain type of person. And in fact, when I read it, it seems to me that if you're at the stage of your career, and you've read what's on that paper, you'd say, well, if I'm part of the consortia and I'm kind of buried deep, then that's the only person that can apply. And on the other hand, first of all, second of all, maybe, I want to say that I'm totally supportive of the program because I think it's a really, really good idea. Anytime you put sort of young people and you want good ideas and promising people together and you want to fund them, I mean, that's a really good thing. But I am worried a little bit about the pigeonholing of the certain type of people that you want, because good innovative people come from all sorts of places. I understand the concept that maybe they're not the superstar and maybe they don't verbalize all their ambitions and they're in center stage. But maybe the R01 takes care of that. I don't know. If they don't have an R01, then it's a first-grant mechanism no matter what. I can't really tell. But like I said, when I first read this and it says, you know, as a member of a consortium, that sort of brings up a notion of a certain type of person in a very selected area. And I think if the ambition is to really get good innovation and really good people, they come from lots of places. So I would just be careful not to restrict it too much right now. Mark, you're back up. I just want to reinforce something Jay said. I'm worried that this will end up just adding to the consortium's effort. And it seems to me what you want to do is work a K99, isn't it? Isn't it the K99 grant where you want to help them develop their own independent research program, except it's different from a K99 that you're funding the person, not the project. Jeff? So why isn't it the K99? This is not a K99. We do have K99. That has to be for, you have to be a postdoc and you have to end up in a faculty. Go ahead, Aviv. I just want to point out this cannot speak to the K99 because the K99 has a long training phase and these are for people to presume we are at the end of the training or have not been trained for quite a while. So we do fund K99, so that niche is filled. Right. And that I think very much works well with people who end up being the best authors of these last papers that we all have been talking about, right? Because it's natural that would be very appealing to the reviewer of K99. Yeah, the K99 has specific requirements for a training plan, for a mentoring plan, for a career development plan, which is different, I think. Right. And I think also thinking about the scale of the funding with two, if these are just two R01s in the kind of standard more general pool in the pool of many other R01s, then even if we make them about the investigator and not about the research program, I think they're impact is reduced. Whereas if we try and really use them to capture these things, population, and emphasize that this is about the research, the person more than the specific project, then it is a re-experimenting something new. And then, regardless of the outcome of the experiment, we learn something extraordinary, valuable from it, and presumably, the great people will be funded through it. You're done? Okay. Jeff. You're up. I'm certainly attracted to this notion of trying to give people earlier in their careers a leg up here, but I guess I'm still struggling with what kind of person this is. So you have people who have been unable to get R01s. They've tried. And maybe that's because the study section is risk averse, and here we've got somebody with some innovative ideas. You know, is that the type of person? I'm guessing that's not the type of person we're thinking about here, but I'd be interested in sort of some concrete confirmation that that's the case. And if it's folks who haven't applied yet and haven't really tried for an R01, but yet they want that independent career, I guess I'm wondering how many people will have substance, sufficient substance in their career to date to say, we're going to invest this amount of money for this amount of time into this individual and allow them some independence. And I guess as others have said, the independence seems to me to undermine the value of the consortium by pulling out talented people and asking them to go ahead and pursue independent work and that may be a destructive influence in that respect. So I guess maybe I just want some clarity. For folks who have tried to get R01s but have not been successful, is that the type of person we're thinking about here? Are we really thinking about folks who haven't evolved to that point yet? Well, I'll turn it into a bit of a joke. As one of the SROs who may be responsible for organizing this review, the notion of saying this is for everyone who hasn't been able to succeed on your own in R01, send us your ideas. No, we don't want that. Okay, Jonathan was in the queue, so hold on a second. So as someone who has been a team scientist for 30-some odd, too many years, and someone who's advocated for team science and had to do that at multiple institutions and tried to get them the recognition that they deserve, I think focusing this on team science is a good idea. I'm usually a pretty agreeable guy, but I think I'm disagreeing with some of the folks here. I really think that having that focused in that way for the individuals, not who are the first authors, but the individuals who are the contributors, who haven't had an opportunity to rise for whatever reason. We know what the dynamics in a lot of these consortia are like and how difficult it is to get the recognition that you deserve. So I think having this as a focused effort for that, I think is a really, really good idea. I think you can tweak a little bit how you define team science, how you define that, I think, and maybe you don't have to require the consortia idea, although that's likely to be where most of these folks are coming from, but I think it's really important that we focus in that area. I see this sort of as a pilot idea. I mean, this may be a year or two or three from now, we can broaden it out to some other things, but right now I think that's a real problem area that we have a real opportunity to focus in on and help solve. So I'd be all in favor of the team science idea. Can I just amplify one point, Sean? I really do want to stress that this is an experiment. So there's other institutes doing other things. We're going to do this. It's going to be small scale compared to some of these others, only two a year, but it will be an experiment. And like any experiment, we don't have to force ourselves to stay that in a zone for five or even 10 years. I would very much like to see us be in a position to reevaluate what's coming in and whether we're liking out two or three years in and we could tweak it after that. We're not going to be locked into anything forever. And so I think some flex, we should just keep in mind, it'll be an ongoing experiment, and we will have future councils tweak it as necessary. So here's what is a little bit confusing about this idea. You have, for me, you have a staff scientist that is part of a team that presumably has a lot of money because they're in one of these big teams. Now you're going to give one of their staff members 300,000 a year. What are they going to do now? Are they going to continue being a team scientist and just add this to the big pool of the team or are they going to go and do their own thing? That's what I... I assume they would do both. I assume if this person is going to get an award, they're being quite successful within the consortium. We don't want to force them to leave the consortium. We're allowing them to do something where they're not restricted or bound to the consortium. This is Dan. Can you remind us somewhere? Go ahead, Dan. So as I'm losing this, one way to think about this is, first of all, I'm not sure that any two would give an observable view of who your attentional is, but I recognize that we don't want to make n equals 2. One way of thinking about this is, what happens to these people three or five years down the road? Is this an indication that they will be competitive from their own ones? The expectation is that this is like a one... I'm concerned that this is like a one-time bowl into the maw. Our organization makes a big difference to the organization and won't, in fact, make much difference to the applicant. So I would just encourage the RFA, as it's written, to make clear to the sex who evaluate these exactly what the criteria are. And we're not just interested in somebody being particularly good in a team. They get up a bunch of money, but they're not going to do anything different from what they would do in part of the team and what the long-term outcome of this might be. Okay, Dan. Aviv, hold on one second. Trey is next in line, then I'll come back to you. So I just want to make the sort of point here that I think you guys can achieve everything you want to achieve, and I think you're making very good points, but I think it can all be achieved without saying this person has to be part of ENCODE or fill in the blank of whatever formal collaboration you're talking about. Right, that's the only point. So if we change the wording, it should be a team science oriented, I mean, is that the overarching uniqueness here? I think, I think, we could simply say they have to have demonstrated an interest and motivation, it's a team science. A thoughtful phrasing of that, I think, is the key, because you have all sorts of people, and I think we all speak from our own experience. I mean, I like to think of us as extremely collaborative as a lab and we're involved in a patchwork of things, but it's hard pressed for us, and I think a number of people in my circles to say, oh, I'm part of this or that, I mean, you are and you're not, and you publish some of the papers and some of the back-to-back journals, but I don't think we're on the ENCODE, we're not on the ENCODE grant, we're not on the TCGA grant, even though we're very much involved in some of the same activities. So I think if you just said collaborative science or team science, you wouldn't take care of that. But do you like the idea that if I was asked what's unique about NHGRI's program in this fund, people not about it, what I would like to be able to say is we are trying an experiment to enrich for team scientists, as opposed to non-team scientists. So we did that by saying, you had to have been in a consortium, maybe you could say you have to have a very nice half-page describing how you are, because this is a unique, this is a different niche. I would second what Rafael said. Hold on. Rethinking exactly what that first bullet, the bullet point 2.1 says would be Do you agree with the idea that the unique part of our unique contribution would be making it a team science oriented person or not, because I can't still quite tell whether you want to have any restriction or whether you don't want to have any. So I like the idea, I'm not sure if, I think there's been a lot of debate about that over on the table and I'm not sure if we have consensus on that. Personally, I like the idea of a collaborative, focused R01 or win. Okay, wait a second. Aviv wants to answer this question. That's her message. So go ahead, Aviv. Well, there was a question of what would happen with those people once they got this funding, would we be depleting the original goal of team science and consortium effort? And so I wanted to point out that NCI set up a program indicating for sub-scientists an R50 grant and it just supports the person's salary and I think it was part of the indication that these people are not entirely beholden to someone else who's the PI of the grant on which they were initially funded. But from my extremely non-representative sample of a few people I know who've received it, the outcome was actually remarkable because on the one hand these people still continue to perform a lot of the functions that they did before but they would often, for example hire a person to work with them and had the opportunity to supervise someone or already were supervising people but expanding it in the time that was released was really used in order to do new and exciting endeavors but often and almost for the scientific nature of things these were things that were kind of pushing the envelope of the area in which these people were engaged before. So it had all of the desired effects and that was actually a smaller accessible funding because it was really just salary support for the investigators themselves there wasn't really a grant people. I like this program better than that program but at least it's an indication that this idea does not undermine the team science that preceded it. Okay, I've got Dan on the phone I've got Steve, I've got Jay anybody else want to get in the queue? John, again. Go ahead. I already said what I needed to say five minutes ago. Sorry, thanks. The rewards of waiting. Steve, go next. I think the first bullet is really good. Support highly innovative work in Genovese. I don't think anybody will argue with that. The second part though I think there's two pieces to this. One, that it certainly it should be an opportunity for people that participate in team science. I think the question you brought up is that sort of the unique differentiator. It's an experiment it's possible, but it's also I think the question is do we really have data that it's really self-limiting and it's really a problem. The one area that I do know that is a problem is when someone writes for an R01 or something and they don't have any preliminary research or they're not a well-known researcher they pretty generally get two. I guess one of the question it could be support creative investigators who, for example, participate in consortia or similar long groups or I hate to say it so broadly but at a junior stage in their career because you really want, I would argue you certainly want to are you trying to solve this particular problem in consortia or are you trying to find innovative people and you can certainly encourage people that are in consortia to apply you can also encourage people that for whatever reason are under the umbrella or shadow of something else. So anyway I think of you've kind of made some of the points I was going to try to make more cogently than I would make them but just to go back to your point and give this uniquely I don't think you'd describe it as we're trying to improve team science because that's not really what it's trying to do it's trying to identify individuals who are in that matrix and give them some independence that would be and it's an NHGRI specific thing to Steve's point again, there are other mechanisms for supporting young people supporting creative people but just to come back to the point what's NHGRI specific? Team science is certainly somewhat NHGRI specific another thing is technology innovation and I've certainly seen students of mine and others get disadvantaged applying to conventional mechanisms like the Innovator Award and things like that where the review comes back great project I just don't really like technology but that kind of loops back to having a broader box where we just say why are you disadvantaged from other mechanisms and allowing people to come into that box whether it's because of team science or something else but so just to go back a little bit I think again I still like the idea of team science and focusing in on the team science I think the idea here at least in my mind and certainly where I've had struggles with some of my junior faculty and some of my former trainees and things like that is being able to give them an opportunity to move beyond just the team science beyond just being part of a consortium doesn't mean they're going to leave consortia they're there for a reason most of them like that kind of thing and they want to do that this just gives them an opportunity to learn from that and also be in charge or have a project whatever that project is because it's people not projects and move there and become what our institution now calls a hybrid scientist where they're PI on some things and team science on other things and I suspect that there are I mean we're not talking a huge number of people here I suspect there are a few where that would really really fit and be valuable to the community but they just they need that opportunity because they're never under the current formats they're very unlikely to be able to go off and get their own RO1 so I on a project basis so I think this is really a I think there's a really good trajectory for the people that would get funded I've got Val, Gayle and Trey Carol again Kay I'll try to make this short first I wanted to point out I was very struck by Jonathan's telling of his own story he's clearly very talented in fact I wanted to point out from your talk this morning that he was instrumental in the AMD GWAS story which was the first GWAS but the other thing I wanted to point out and I might get, I like analogies so I might get a little silly here but I think the issue is how deep these consortia are so is there talent buried in there that aren't brought out so the analogy is the Boston Celtics okay Yinder, Gordon Hayward, Kyrie Irving you find Terry Rozier Marcus Smart so is that what we could bring out of this and that's my analogy the question is are these consortia deep Gayle, you're next so as I've been listening to you all I've been thinking about people I know in my research teams who I would never ever be able to be successful without they're my co-investigators they have been some of them for a decade and they I was thinking about what Carol said in the very beginning and they are they are happy functioning in that they do their best work in collaboration with us who work with them think man these are really smart people they're very creative but perhaps a variety of reasons are not interested in becoming established independent investigators which is your very last bullet and so as I've listened this is a really interesting conversation as I've listened to it all I'm thinking it's almost this kind of kind of contradiction between finding people who are really talented partly because of the qualities I just described and then giving them five years of a fair amount of money per year that was direct that's great and then what the product would be and that's the thing I'm a little confused about at the end and I think you said that at the very beginning and I would I personally would really love if there was a mechanism that would be something that people in that position I just described would be competitive for okay I've got Trey Carol and then I want to take a straw poll good idea so just a thought you know where this idea might work really well and not instead of this discussion if successful maybe at a later date would be as all of us know when these large consortium grants roll out there's not one mechanism but there's a whole constellation that come out why not include this as one of those so next to the data coordinating center and the data generating center you have for that specific mechanism you could attach and then you would then it's very unabashed it's for that particular consortium we want to make sure that we don't bury people in it just a thought for later Carol last word my last word was that I feel like the discussion has been really good but it suggests to me that we aren't ready to there's not going to be unanimity on this concept at this point in time I could have told you that a couple of days ago okay the straw poll I'd like to run is just a quick show of hands people are in favor of including the phrase team science as a requirement for entry in this FOA team or collaborative science we're going to have to define collaborative how many would vote for that one, two, three, four, five and how many don't want who doesn't want to see that in this FOA they just want it wide open I want to know what science isn't collaborative we have a problem defining collaborative so do I have some abstainers here okay hold on Dan hold on was the vote that team science only those that are in team science can apply correct anybody else correct those are your two choices but team science with broad not not NHGRI consortia yeah team science anybody who hasn't I thought that's what I was doing if they want to get through the peer review system probably yes Dan did you want to make a comment I agree with most science but I think confining this to something that we define restrictive it seems exclusionary as I think this trade about half an hour ago Jeff yeah I think there's a compromise position I think Jay identified it I think it was Jay a while ago which is you could include team science consortia but any other rationale you might put forward for why it is you've been unable to succeed there's an emphasis perhaps on that but not exclusive maybe that can be phrased so that you're not arguing why you're no good but yes arguing why should the study section believe you are a collaborative gala guy why your brilliance has been overseeing my problem is it seems to me you're undermining team science because what you're saying is you want to support people who do team science but you want to support the guys to get out of team science to do their own I don't think this has a successful end point removal from I think of it as freedom operate you've now become I mean one of the things I thought of with this is that sometimes you're supported within a consortium or within some project and you have some skills analytical skills or experimental skills technology skills and you want to have the ability to jump around maybe and bring those skills to other projects other programs other consortium other whatever this would give you freedom this would be funding the person to basically control their own destiny they're not going to have to worry about getting listed on a grant to get support for it so my attitudes they could choose to remain team oriented and go to different consortium on their choice not others or they could become with Jonathan I like what Jonathan had to say I like this hybrid idea this is when I had trainees when I strongly encourage when they got involved in the consortium I would say what also would try to become a little bit of a hybrid because you want to be able to have some part of your program be independent and some part of your program this if they if they aspire to that they have again freedom to operate because they they have their own grant they have their own money they have their own support someone that has worked in multidisciplinary groups that would like some independence to work with other multi exactly okay well consortium say something like yeah yeah yeah yeah that's great but right away we go down this tube of encode and no yeah well don't go down that's not what you're saying no okay that's what the phraseology okay yeah so I think again I was trying to change the phraseology to team science and it just might be we should forget the consortium because maybe that brings up conjures up names and clubs and all that so but I like this idea of hybrid scientists freedom to operate interdisciplinary that team science that was what we were trying to get at Carol hold on one second Carol and I just wanted to on that part because it's something that idea of percent time for this person so it does differ a bit from the NCI model which is like let's fully fund a staff scientist in here we're spending like 50 to 30 percent time time commitment is what we're imagining to give them again that space and that freedom to innovate and move but then you know we're not giving them 100 percent of their funding so to say that we're pulling them fully away from something they still have to get funded for the rest of their so we'll be clear to make it that we're not going to kill the consortium this is a better concept than the one that R50s in NCI are based on I only use that as an example but even in that context that was actually a little less than ideal in how it was great frame the I know about five or six people who received it and I don't think in one case anyone would argue that this compromise the team science from which they grew I think everyone would say only amplify the new great people are also giving them independence I also think it is our responsibility to make sure the people who want to be independent in science don't end up being cornered into places where they cannot develop that independence while they're serving you know the greater cause that would be unfair and also a great loss of talent Carol I just want to make sure that I understand the the so I like this idea of hybrid and freedom to operate is this only for people who are on a track for like a tenured track faculty slot or is this really open to the staff scientist person as well who may or may not I mean this goes back to institutional commitment because oftentimes institutional commitment the faculty is different than it is the staff scientist and and I I'm still sort of unclear on that point and I think it's a really important point for this particular mechanism I don't think I don't think we were we were not going to do it in terms of what the we want institutional support and peer review will sort out what that means but there's not going to be required to be a tenured track investor it's not going to be required to have any other I mean because institutions do different things what they allow people to reply for so we'll let the ecosystem go to whatever it does oh you're going to get a two second drop on this so I think we heard some valuable language we can commit to modifying the wording I can see what we don't like I think what people like brought into little but still try to keep the spirit of what we were trying to do through some of the other words that I was using okay could we bring it back to the August meeting uh a revised language I mean I will tell you part of the reason we we brought we we've worked very hard for this once we got the bolus of money to get it to this council so that we could get it going to get it out next year so some of us are just anxious to start the experiment to be honest we can do it we have money set aside for next year I've put in you know sequestered a little bit of our increase this year to make sure it's available to start it next year these things take a year we still have to write the FOA get it out applied for reviewed and funded I retract my comment and Carol we only have three hours on that call so did we only talking about two right we're talking about two it'll come to next May also so we can find it by the end of fiscal 19 okay so I think we better take a vote so I'm looking for I'm asking for a motion to approve the concept and a second all in favor any opposed any abstentions thank you thank you Dan you can also vote by email okay as a courtesy to Dan who's been here since one o'clock I'd like to get his presentation launched right and then we'll take our break afterwards okay by the way I should point out that that was a terrifically valuable discussion and completely predicted by most of us we knew that this was going to be an incredibly interesting discussion and so with none of it came as a surprise to the staff what you approved it yeah we thought you'd approve no but we knew there's going to be this incredibly rich discussion because it really is lots of different ways to look at it so we're not surprised by the richness of that discussion