Guest blog by Valerie Florance, PhD, Director of NLM’s Division of Extramural Programs
Explore the Training
NLM’s Extramural Programs Division is a principle source of NIH funding for research training in biomedical informatics, applying approaches in computer and information science to challenges in basic biomedical research, health care, and public health administration. NLM’s support fundamentally shapes the education, training, and advancement of biomedical informatics nationally. For decades, NLM has sponsored university-based training for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows to prepare them for research careers. These programs support NLM’s long-term investment strategy to help influence and impact the field of biomedical informatics and data science.
Last October, NLM published NOT-LM-21-001 in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects. This program, a model among NIH training programs, advances training with big data in biomedical informatics and produces interdisciplinary, researchers that fully comprehend the challenges of knowledge representation, decision support, translational research, human-computer interaction, and social and organizational factors that influence effective adoption of health information technology in biomedical domains. This notice was the first step in a year-long process that will result in new 5-year grant awards that begin in July 2022. You’ll find the notice outlines the expected timetable for publishing the funding opportunity announcement, accepting applications, reviewing them and making awards.
The solicitation for new applications will be published in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts in March with applications due in May. For those interested in applying for an NLM training grant for the first time, we encourage a review of the previous solicitation to get a sense of the data and programmatic descriptions that are required for a training grant application.
Because issuance dates for the next competition are estimates, it is also helpful to subscribe to the weekly Table of Contents emails from the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts. The extra benefit of this weekly mailing is that it lists all new funding issuances from NIH plus important notices about policy changes.
A Strong Foundation
NLM’s training programs offer graduate education and postdoctoral research experiences in a wide range of areas including health care informatics, translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, public health informatics, and biomedical data science. Each of these programs offer a combination of core curriculum and electives. In the current 5-year cycle, seven programs also offer special tracks in environmental exposure informatics supported by NIH’s National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences.
A decades-old project, the university-based training initiatives is one of NLM’s signature grant programs. NLM’s training programs have produced many leaders in the field of biomedical informatics. Past trainees have taken positions in academia, industry, small businesses, health care organizations, and government. Currently, NLM supports 200 trainee positions at 16 universities around the United States and provides funding each year for up to 40 short-term trainee positions that are used to help recruit college graduates to our field by providing introductory training and research opportunities. To develop a sense of community among the trainees, NLM brings its trainees together each year, apart from those falling within a pandemic year, for an annual conference hosted at one of the university sites.
You can find a map with links to descriptions of the current programs here. The website also provides links to information about past annual conferences – check out past agendas to get a sense of the broad scope of science across the field of biomedical informatics.
Attendees comparing notes at NLM Informatics Training Conference 2017 in La Jolla, California
Did you take part in this training? What was your favorite thing about this experience? What advice would you give to current students? How can we make the program even better?
Dr. Florance heads NLM’s Extramural Programs Division, which is responsible for the Library’s grant programs and coordinates NLM’s informatics training programs.