The Rep Report: May 2022

As the current NICHD Basic Sciences Institutes and Centers (IC) Representative, I represent NICHD postdoctoral fellows at the NIH Fellows Committee (FelCom) meeting every month and share the latest news with you here. Do you have a concern or question that you want brought up at the next meeting? Contact me at lauren.walling@nih.gov!

Good news for trainees! The Office of Intramural Research announced that starting May 1^st all trainees will be getting a raise! Postdocs will receive a 4.5% increase, and graduate students and postbacs will also receive a raise. This will likely not be seen until your June stipend payment. 

Registration is open for the OITE Career Symposium, taking place May 11–13. Register at the OITE website. There are currently ~250 invited speakers and OITE will be working with the Health and Recreation subcommittee (Committee Chair: Dr. Tiffany Zarella (tiffany.zarrella@nih.gov), Postdoctoral PRAT fellow) to coordinate in-person meet-ups.

The Visiting Fellows Committee has five open positions for any interested fellows. They have one vacancy for the secretary position, two vacancies in the social subcommittee, and two for the country rep & visibility subcommittee. Please send a statement of interest and CV to harrison.daly@nih.gov and aditi.chaurasia@nih.gov. 

The second half of the April FelCom meeting was a presentation by guest speakers Dr. Shai Silberberg (Director of the Office of Research Quality, NINDS) and Dr. Devon Crawford (Program Director, Office of Research Quality, NINDS). Their excellent talk focused on scientific rigor and transparency and how to address unconscious bias in our research. Check out the NINDS Office of Research Quality website for more resources on the topic.