Welcome to the University of Michigan Medical School E-News, your source for quick and current news from the medical school community.

From the Dean's Office

Dec. 2: Come learn about our new Medical School "platform" in China
You are invited to a town hall style meeting from 5 - 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2, in Ford Auditorium, to hear about the Medical School's recent activity in China and to participate in discussions about the new Medical School "platform" in China. Speakers include, James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., dean, and Joseph C. Kolars, M.D., senior associate dean for Education and Global Initiatives. A panel will also include, Steven L. Kunkel, Ph.D., senior associate dean for Research, and Amy Huang, M.D., project manager. For more information, e-mail Dr. Huang at yanhuang@med.umich.edu.

A short video about this effort is available here.

Research

Dec. 8: Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., to speak at the Detroit Economic Club
Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Taubman Institute, will speak about "Stem Cells: The New Frontier of Medical Science," at the Dec. 8 meeting of the Detroit Economic Club at the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. She will explain this new medical technology, the progress Michigan is making in moving to the forefront of stem cell research and what this means for the health and economic well-being of the state. The luncheon will begin at noon. For ticket information, visit www.econclub.org.

Dec. 17: 'Changes in the NIH Grant Game: Impact Trumps Details'
The Medical School Office of Research cordially invites everyone to join us for a workshop about changes in the NIH peer review scoring system and the corresponding new format requirements. The workshop will take place from 1 - 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17, in the North Lecture Hall, Med Sci II. Chris Black from the Office of Research will cover the changes as outlined on the NIH Web site. A panel of faculty members, who serve on NIH study sections, will comment on their experience using the new review scale and will offer additional suggestions on addressing the evaluation criteria while complying with stricter page limits. The panel will address R, K and P awards. To register for the workshop, please visit the Web site. For more information, e-mail Kathryn Ridner at kridner@umich.edu or call 734-763-4086.

Cancer research funds available
The Comprehensive Cancer Center is pleased to announce the availability of funds to support cancer innovation proposals. A principal goal of these awards is to support preliminary collaborative research studies emanating from at least two of our UMCCC research programs that would enable or enhance new grant application submissions to the NIH or other extramural, peer-reviewed funding agencies (e.g., American Cancer Society, Department of Defense). Planned new collaborative cancer grant submissions that are eligible for support from the Cancer Research Innovation Grant Program are geared to the following outcomes:

• Program project-type applications (PO1 or SPORE applications) in which UMCCC members from two or more UMCCC programs will serve as project leaders or co-investigators
• Multi-disciplinary RO1-type applications led by two or more UMCCC investigators who do not presently hold a funded collaborative RO-type grant in the proposed research area
  

For more information, visit the Web site.

Education

Nov. 24: Overview of Cytoscape
This hands-on workshop will present an overview of Cytoscape, an open source molecular interactions visualization tool. Cytoscape allows you to explore molecular interactions and biological pathways and integrates these networks with annotations, gene expression profiles and other state data. Cytoscape can facilitate filtering, clustering and searching of your interactions. Many additional features are available through its extensive list of plug-ins. The workshop will take place from 10 - 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 24, in the Taubman Medical Library classroom. For more information, visit the Web site.

Dec. 11: NCBI Molecular biology resources webinar
The Health Sciences Libraries and the University Library Bioinformatics Interest Group is sponsoring a webinar presented by Peter S. Cooper, Ph.D., Public Services, National Center for Biotechnology Information. Cooper will present a brief tutorial covering molecular and literature database searching at the NCBI through the Entrez system and BLAST. The session emphasizes database integration as part of the NCBI Discovery system. The tutorial features the new NCBI PubMed interface, the new home page, and other aspects of the NCBI Discovery initiative that enhance usability and highlight data relationships. Cooper will give an overview of databases, describe types of molecular data, demonstrate OMIM, SNP, genome information and BLAST searching using a single gene as an example to navigate across the integrated databases, search tools, and other resources at the NCBI site. Registrants will be able to do hands-on work in the computer classroom during the webinar. The webinar will begin at 3 p.m. in 2802 Med. Sci. II on Friday, Dec. 11. Space is limited, so please register early. For more information or to register, visit the Web site.

Clinical

Nov. 30 and Dec. 10: A whirlwind tour of new clinical resources
Join the Health Sciences Libraries from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30 and Thursday, Dec. 10, in University Hospital 2C228 to view the new electronic resources that the M-Library now has available. In addition to DynaMed, EMBASE and Scopus, come see the new Mirlyn and new PubMed interfaces, AccessMedicine, AccessPharmacy, StatRef!, CINAHL, Pediatric Care Online, Facts and Comparisons, Dentistry and Oral Sciences Source, ACP and MedlinePlus. This is a drop-in session, and registration is not necessary. Come for a few minutes to pick up handouts or stay and play for an hour. For more information, e-mail hslibraries@umich.edu .

Administrative

Nominate a colleague for the Kaiser Teaching Awards
Consider nominating a colleague for one of the Kaiser-Permanente Awards for Excellence in Teaching. There will be one award given to an outstanding pre-clinical teacher and one given to an outstanding clinical teacher. Any faculty member who teaches in the M1 or M2 portion of the medical school curriculum may be nominated for the pre-clinical award; faculty with major teaching effort in the M3 or M4 years are eligible for nomination for the clinical award. Faculty who have previously received a Kaiser award are not eligible for re-nomination.

For further information about the Kaiser awards and for instructions on submitting a nomination, visit the Web site. At this time, we are asking for names of nominees and brief qualifying statements only; all necessary support materials will be requested at a later date. The deadline for nominations is Dec. 1.

MSA wins silver award as Green IT unit
Thanks to the dedicated work of Medical School Information Services, Medical School Administration has achieved "silver" status as a recognized Green IT unit on campus. The Green IT Achievement program recognizes U-M units that follow green computing best practices. There are three achievement levels: gold, silver and bronze. For several years MSIS has been committed to reducing energy and other resource costs and establishing sustainable IT technologies for the Medical
School. Two major areas of success have been improved management of power settings on work stations and virtualizing MSIS servers. For more information about the main campus Green IT program, check the Web site .

Other

H1N1 vaccine now available for all patient care providers
The supply of H1N1 influenza vaccine has improved enough to allow vaccination of all faculty/staff who provide direct patient care in any area of UMHS, as well as staff who enter patient rooms to interact directly with patients. The complete list of who is eligible for the vaccine is available here.

Walk-in vaccination clinics for all eligible faculty and staff will be held as follows:

• Midnight shift:
  Tonight and tomorrow night, 11 p.m. - 7 a.m., MedInn Room C213
• Day/evening shift:
  Friday, Nov. 20 1:30 - 4 p.m., Dining Rooms C and D, University Hospital
  Monday, Nov. 23, 10:30 a.m. - 4 p.m., Dining Rooms C and D, University Hospital
  

Vaccination for employees is also available at Occupational Health Services (3rd floor, MedInn, 7 a.m. - 4 p.m. M-F) and at Ambulatory Care sites that have H1N1 vaccine.

Remember, if you begin to feel ill, use the online flu guidance tool to guide you.

For more information on flu-related issues at UMHS, visit www.med.umich.edu/u/flu.

Nov. 24: Support the UMHS American Red Cross blood drive
Support the UMHS American Red Cross blood drive by donating Tuesday, Nov. 24, from 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. in the Towsley Center Lobby. Each unit of blood that we use comes from a volunteer in our community -- someone just like you. The supply of blood in southeast Michigan continues to be at critically low levels, thus our effort to ensure we have the necessary blood products to support our care mission. This is an ongoing issue during holiday times. Your contributions support our excellent clinical faculty and staff who help our patients heal and recover from illness and injury. If you are eligible, please register today by visiting www.givelife.org -- use sponsor code: goblue.

Seminars, lectures, colloquia and events

Basic Science Seminars

Clinical Seminars

Major Events and Conferences

Student Seminars and Thesis Defense