NIH Open Mike

Dr. Lauers Reflections on 2022: Transcript

December 27, 2021

David Kosub: Hello, and welcome to NIH "Extramural Nexus TV." I'm your host, David Kosub, with the NIH's Office of Extramural Research, and I'm glad to say, we're doing our year-in-review recap of 2022 this time, and we have with us the Director of the Office of Extramural Research, the Deputy Director of Extramural Research here at NIH, Dr. Michael Lauer. Thank you very much for being with us, Dr. Lauer.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Thanks, David. It's great to be here.

David Kosub: Wonderful, and just like last year and the last couple of years, this won't be painful. We just want to hear about it, hear your thoughts on how it went this past year, kind of what's going to be happening in the next year and give people some insights into what you're thinking and how we're planning for things going forward, and so if all that sounds good with you, then we'll jump right in. How'd we do in 2022?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well, it's certainly been an interesting here. A lot has happened, and a lot if happening right now. I suppose what's very much on everybody's mind is the rollout of the Data Management & Sharing Policy, tremendous amount of work has been done on that over the past year. We have a new website, lots of information that's been put out, a lot of engagement back-and-forth with people in the community, and the policy actually takes place, takes effect in January of 2023. There's also, of course, been a lot of interest in other issues, including our workforce, integrity compliance, and we can talk about that. Some of the things we do in the Office of Extramural Research are big deals to us but may not necessarily be visible to the community, and one example of that is our move to the cloud. We moved eRA to the cloud. We made a major step in that direction back in 2020, and we completed this in 2022. So now, essentially, all of our eRA applications, including RePORTER and RePORT, are sitting in the cloud, and that means we have a better time managing them. They're more efficient. They're more secure. This is the kind of thing that means a great deal to us and is important for our work, but it may not necessarily be apparent to people in the community.

David Kosub: Well, my head is always in the cloud, so I'm glad I have some company up there, and, yeah, definitely, you hit on some topics I want to touch on as we move forward, but jumping right off, the COVID pandemic: We're in a new phase of the pandemic, and we still recognize there could be some stressors in the community. There's still issues that need to be addressed. I guess we're in a tripledemic now, and so are we still focused on that? Are we going to be thinking about it? Are we going to be applying any of our best practices or things that we learned that worked well going forward? What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well, I think one thing that's very interesting is that you and I are having this conversation right now virtually, and this is despite the fact that the emergency pandemic is really over, and in the county that we're sitting in, Montgomery County, Maryland, we're at low transmission rate. I'm actually in my office today, and I've met a number of my colleagues in the office today, and yet we are having this meeting virtually, and that's totally normal. In fact, most people in the Office of Extramural Research are working remotely. That has become a new normal. So even as the effects of the pandemic wear off or becomes more part of the background scene and less an imminent public-health emergency, this new mode of work is a challenge, and it's both a challenge and an opportunity. And I'm sure that this is true throughout the Extramural Research community. Now, of course, there's a great deal of variability, just like here on the NIH campus. My colleagues, who are Intramural Researchers, who are based in laboratories, they have been fully backing the physical workspace for a long time, but other colleagues who are doing what we might call more dry research, are in a different space and one that is more similar to us. So we have adapted, and we are continuing to adapt to this new mode of work, and it does create stress, in part because this is not something that we're fully familiar with. I think as this next phase, back in 2020 and 2021, the way we thought of it was, okay, we're in the midst of a major public health emergency. It's unprecedented, but it's going to come to an end, and then things are going to go back to normal. I think by probably late 2021 or early 2022, we realized that there was not get back to be a return back to the way it once was, but we were going to have to develop a future set of models as to how the work environment would be.

David Kosub: Yeah. I definitely enjoy the campus, but I love my home office too. So, yeah, and so I recognize, but also, you mentioned folks still having to go to campus. There's the workforce issue that effects people across the board, and as with COVID, you were just discussing improvements and things like that. We definitely touched on the workforce a lot this past year. There were definitely many policies, things of interest. UNITE was working on addressing structural racism. We were talking about diversification of the workforce in many different ways. Researchers with disabilities, we talked about. We were addressing harassment, trying to create a safe and respectful workplace and moving the needle on that. What are your thoughts? We're leaving the mark there? What else is needed, or what else should we be focused on? I should put it that way.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Well. I think you've very nicely articulated a number of the key priorities of NIH, and if you haven't already, I would suggest that you take a look. At the very least, look at the slides and the materials from the ACD meeting from December 8th and December 9th. This was an action-packed meeting. We talked about a number of critically important issues, which we'll get to in just a second. There continues to be a great deal of interest and concern about the next generation of researchers. Certainly, we have every reason to believe, and we have data to support that earlier career investigators were more severely affected by the pandemic and continued to be affected in a disproportionate way by the pandemic. We are pleased that the number of early stage investigators that we supported in 2022, FY 2022, was around 1,600. It's one of the highest numbers ... In fact, it is the highest number.

David Kosub: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Michael Lauer: It's the highest number of early stage investigators we've ever funded, and we are now getting to the point where we're looking at early stage investigators who were funded 4 or 5 years ago as we started this initiative and seeing how well they do. The UNITE initiative has reached a remarkable level of maturity. There's a progress report that has been released and is available to the public. There are programs that have been initiated. There's a terrific presentation at the ACD meeting, back on December 9th, which is worth looking at. We are continuing our work on a safe and respectful workplace, and one major even that happened in 2022 occurred in the FY 2022 Omnibus Bill that was passed in March. In there, there was a provision that requires institutions to report to the NIH when some kind of action is taken against a scientist because of problems related to harassment or a hostile work environment. This is already starting to make a real difference. We're receiving a number of self- disclosures, and we're hoping that this, along with our other efforts, is helping to nurture a culture that will eventually end harassment, discrimination in the workplace. And then, I'll finally mention that one of the key topics that came up during the ACD meeting was about postdocs and the postdoctoral training experience. There is a new working group that is being formed. It's being cochaired by Dr. Shelley Berger from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Tara Schwetz, who is the acting Principal Deputy Director here at NIH. I'm very privileged and pleased to be a member of this working group, and this working group is going to be looking at the postdoctoral experience and trying to sense what we can do to make it sustainable and better.

David Kosub: Yeah, hear, hear. I'm very excited to see what's going to happen with that group and also so happy to see Section 239 on harassment being passed or enacted. That was definitely great. Along those lines of kind of the integrity, kind of making sure that science happens in safe and respectful places, the science actually is good, we definitely made a lot of efforts also in this integrity front. You mentioned DMS as kind of a way to address rigor in the future of science. Could you speak to more about some of the efforts on the integrity space, our compliance efforts, research security, things like that? Those were big topics last year.

Dr. Michael Lauer: So I think one thing that's very interested over the past 5 or 6 years is that research integrity has greatly expanded. We used to get, at NIH, about 70 to 80 new integrity allegations per year. These focused nearly entirely on what you might call classic scientific integrity or classic scientific misconduct: fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. What has happened, particularly starting in 2018, is that our integrity work has greatly expanded to include a variety of kinds of misconduct. So not only classic scientific misconduct but also professional misconduct, as it might manifest itself in harassment, discrimination or a hostile work environment. Problems with financial conflicts of interest, problems with misrepresentation on our grant applications. Another big problem that we're dealing with are our Peer Review Integrity violations, and as you know, we have a number of blogs that we've posted in which we tell true stories about some of the integrity problems we have faced in Peer Review. There's also, of course, been interest in foreign interference and the effects of foreign interference. That, now, is stabilizing. The number of new cases that we're getting is substantially lower than what we had before, but we're continuing to work our way through a number of cases, and that continues to get a great deal of attention around town.

David Kosub: And just to clarify, those case studies are based on true events.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yeah, that's correct. That's right.

David Kosub: Just to make sure.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Yes, definitely.

David Kosub: Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Yeah, and kind of thinking of zooming out: We've been hitting on the extramural kind of efforts that we've been doing here, but obviously, we work at the NIH. You're on the main campus right now. It's a big ecosystem. It's a big world. What is your view on kind of NIH at large? Especially as new ARPA-H is coming. We're trying to essentially even do more work through other transactions, kind of working with other agencies in a new collaborative way. Anything along those lines, it'd be great to hear your thoughts.

Dr. Michael Lauer: So I think one way of gauging what top priorities we have here at NIH would be by looking through the agenda of our ACD meeting on December 8th and 9th. I think it nicely shows that we did get a very interesting presentation, given by the ARPA-H director. Of course, that's a brand-new program, which is just starting to get going, and we'll be supporting it as best we can and seeing how that moves forward. You mentioned Other Transaction Authority, and just to remind you, Other Transaction Authority means something other than a grant or contract. It's not a grant. It's not a contract. It's Other Transaction. These are ways in which we can make awards that are nimble, flexible, different from what we would normally do in the context of a grant or a contract. This is now about $1 1/2 billion of our portfolio. This is not some little peripheral side experiment that we're doing. People sometimes say that the NIH is fossilized and that we're not interested in innovative modes of funding, and I would say, well, look at Other Transaction. Other Transaction is about as innovative as you can get within the framework of our authorities as a Federal Government agency. Look at the programs that we are funding through Other Transaction. We have community engagement initiatives. We have programs to support high-power computing and mega datasets. We have programs to support machine learning. We have programs to support international collaborations and with different kinds of Peer Review mechanisms. I can go on and on. It's a fascinating set of projects that we are funding through, through other Other Transaction, and that's really a neat example of something which is highly, highly innovative. I'd also say, as you mentioned, that we are collaborating with other agencies. One area that I'm particularly familiar with is our collaborations through OSTP with other agencies like NSF, DOE, DOD on foreign interference and implementing some of the new laws and executive orders. We are implementing laws related to research security. We're also implementing NSPM-33, and this is something where our work with other agencies has been extraordinarily fruitful and productive.

David Kosub: And just for our listeners out there, OSTP, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and NSPM-33, if I say it right, National Security Presidential Memorandum.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Outstanding.

David Kosub: There it was. I got an A-plus, A-plus right there. Well, you definitely hit one some stuff that we're moving forward towards, so might as well hit on 2023. Where are we going? What should people be looking for as we're moving in this year?

Dr. Michael Lauer: So the biggest item, at least for right now, appears to be the rollout of Data Management & Sharing Policy, but we'll be getting our first set of Data Management & Sharing plans, large set, coming in with most grants in January of 2023 and then in the cycles that follow. That obviously is an area of a great deal of attention, and we're going to be following that very closely. We have our new working groups. I already mentioned the working group on postdoctoral researchers. There's another working group from the Advisory Community of the Director on alternative methods, and the idea here is that there may be other ways of studying biomedical problems other than animal models or human models. These are what we call alternative methods. It's a very interesting presentation that was given, showing that there's already been a substantial increase in our investments in this area. So this will be an interesting item. A long time ago, before the pandemic, we used to have something called the regional seminar.

David Kosub: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Michael Lauer: And these were exciting events. I do remember one in particular that was in Chicago that had started on the first night of the World Series, and in the World Series that year were the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. Now, I have to tell you that I'm from Cleveland, and I'm a Cleveland baseball fan, so this was very distracting.

David Kosub: Yes!

Dr. Michael Lauer: And of course, the people in the room there, well, a large number were from Chicago, and the Chicago Cubs actually wound up winning that year. They broke a long-term curse, and I don't know how they could possibly pay attention to the meeting. All right. That's a digression, but it's a memorable one. So these regional seminars, we used to hold them twice a year: once locally and once someplace else. When the pandemic happened, we had to switch to a virtual format, and it was amazing what happened. Our degree of outreach became much greater and also much more equitable, and so we went from about 900 people per conference to 10,000 to 15,000 people per conference. So now, what we're doing is, we're moving to a slightly different model, which so far has been working quite well. So instead of calling it ... We called it the regional seminar. Then we changed it to the virtual seminar. Now, we're going to call it the Grants Conference. It will be in February. It's going to be a 2-day event as opposed to a 4-day event. So there's a lot less time intensity, but what we're doing is, we're holding conferences at other times of year. So we've already have conferences this year on a loan repayment and on integrity and our new subjects. These conferences have gone really well. We had a large attendance. We had guest speakers, and we had more time to discuss each of those topics. So please, if you haven't already, plan to come to the NIH Grants Conference in February, and what that does is, it gives you access to all the materials from the other conferences. It's not only what gets discussed at that conference in February, but everything else as well. NIH has spent a lot of time this past year developing a DEIA strategic plan. This was discussed at the ACD, and my understanding is that it's going to be released in early 2023.

David Kosub: Yeah. Personally, I'm very interested in seeing that plan coming out and talking more about the ACD subgroup on researchers with disabilities, which is also a big topic at ACD this past year. Well, recognizing I'm kind of a glutton for punishment at times, and I've asked this the last couple of years in a row, but do you have any resolutions coming up? You tend to not, but I'll throw it out there anyways.

Dr. Michael Lauer: I think a while ago, I made a resolution that I would no longer make any resolution, so in order to stick to that resolution, and I will not make any resolutions, but what I will say is: First of all, thank you, David for this conversation. This was a lot of fun, and for our colleagues at Extramural Research institutions all around the country and really all around the world, I want to take this opportunity to wish you all the best for a happy new year, for a happy holidays, that you should all stay well and stay healthy and stay safe. If you're traveling, your travels should be safe, and let's all hope for a good, productive and enjoyable 2023.

David Kosub: Hear, hear. Well, thank you much, Dr. Lauer, for this opportunity to hear from you and look at the year-in-review for 2022 and seeing what's happening for '23. I definitely wanted to thank Mr. DeRon Turner, who is always in the background on these videos and the recordings for all of our grants and all of the virtual ... Or, I guess, the Grant Seminar, Grants Conference stuff. Without him, we wouldn't have a lot of this happening, and with that, my name is David Kosub with the NIH's Office of Extramural Research. Have a great 2023. Thank you.

Dr. Michael Lauer: Thank you!