May 11 – 17

A Faculty of Medicine Internal Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund (CFI JELF; formerly known as Leaders Opportunity Fund) Retention Competition with full details will be launched on Friday, May 15, 2015.

Please note that the application form will mirror the national CFI JELF application form.

Please direct any questions to fom.cfi@ubc.ca.

The Gates foundation and its Grand Challenges partners are now accepting applications for the following grant programs:

Proposals are being accepted online until May 13, 2015 on the following topics:

Initial grants will be US $100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to US $1 million.

The Department of Defense has recently announced funding opportunities within the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) and Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program (PRMRP).

Full details for PRCRP Opportunities here

Full details for PRMRP Opportunities at here

The Weston Brain Institute is delighted to launch its Rapid Response 2015 program to provide seed funding for totally novel, high-risk, high-reward translational research ideas to catalyze the development of safe and effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases of aging. Each project may receive up to $150,000 over 12-18 months

Applicants must be researchers or postdoctoral fellows, and developing a therapeutic and/or a tool to help accelerate the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.

Submission of the Letter of Intent is done through the Institute’s online grant management system found here.

The Weston Brain Institute will be holding a Program Information Session for this funding opportunity on May 20th at 1:00 PM. This session is intended to provide you with comprehensive information on the application process and to provide an opportunity for open questions.

To sign-up for the WebEx and receive the dial in details as well as submit any questions you may have in advance, please follow the link.

The Institute welcomes inquiries about our funding programs at neuro@weston.ca or 416-935-4056.

Additional information about the Program can be found here.

The Mitacs Globalink Research Internship (GRI) is now accepting faculty submissions for summer 2016. GRI pairs faculty in Canada with international undergrads for 12-week research projects from May to September.

Submit projects by June 18, 2015, at 5 p.m. PDT.

Questions? Visit the Mitacs website, or contact globalink@mitacs.ca.

The College of Health Disciplines is pleased to announce this year’s awards competition to acknowledge outstanding students, educators and health professionals that exemplify interprofessional health, education and practice. Please assist the College by bringing these scholarships and awards to the attention of your students, colleagues and community partners in health, and kindly post/distribute the attached posters within your units.

Open to current UBC students in any health or human services degree program who will be entering their final year of study in September 2015.

Application deadline: June 8, 2015.

Open to teams and/or individuals who exemplify excellence in interprofessional collaboration in health care. Nominees may be health professionals or educators, and may be from or outside UBC.

Nomination deadline: June 8, 2015 for McCreary Prize; June 15, 2015 for rest of interprofessional awards.

Full details and application/nomination forms are available on the College’s website

The SPARC Office has arranged a CIHR 2015 Foundation Scheme Information Session, hosted by Dr. Lara Boyd. The target audience is brand-new 2015 applicants and grant facilitators/research support staff who are not yet familiar with the Foundation Scheme.

For full details and to register for the May 14th session, please visit the Information Session announcement here. Note: There is limited capacity at some of the sites, including UBC Vancouver, so priority will be given to brand-new 2015 applicants. As such, please register by no later than Monday so that numbers can be finalized.

If you are unable to attend, but would like to receive a copy of the presentation slides, please let Christy McTait (Christy.mctait@ubc.ca) know and you will be included on the message she will be sending to workshop registrants on Tuesday/Wednesday. Otherwise, the presentation slides and a recording of the session will be uploaded to the Presentation Materials section of the SPARC website (CWL required) in early June.

One final note: Christy will be away from the office from May 14th to June 1st inclusive, so will response to all queries as soon as possible upon my return.

If you have any questions, please call or email Christy McTait at 604-827-5615 or christy.mctait@ubc.ca.

Seminar by:

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have dual value as laboratory models of disease and as potential cell therapeutics. For the kidney, hPSCs represent the only long-term cultivatable cells capable of producing new nephrons. We recently devised methods to differentiate hPSCs into convoluted, tubular organoids that mimic kidney development and integrate diverse nephron cell populations, including proximal tubular cells, podocytes, and endothelial cells. When treated with small molecules cargoes or nephrotoxic compounds, this ‘kidney-in-a-dish’ exhibits functional characteristics typical of kidney tissue. Using patient-derived and genome-modified hPSCs, we are using this system to investigate the molecular pathophysiology of polycystic kidney disease and glomerulonephritis. hPSCs provide a new tool for analyzing kidney development and disease in vitro, with potential for high-throughput therapeutic screens, personalized biomarkers, and regenerative medicine.

Hosted by Dr. Kelly McNagny Kelly@brc.ubc.ca

At least 332,000 professional and amateur athletes in North America will watch their sport from the stands or the couch as they recover from a concussion this year. Being sidelined certainly isn’t the most severe consequence of a rough or violent hit in sport. Concussions can have serious, cumulative, and long-lasting effects. When concussed athletes return to play before their brain function is fully restored, they are more likely to sustain a second concussion, which in turn may have greater consequences.

Join scientists and clinicians from UBC’s Faculty of Medicine for a discussion on the latest science behind sport concussions. Tailored for parents, athletes, coaches, and teachers, this panel of international thought leaders will cover the big questions on everyone’s mind:

Program begins at 6:30 pm with a reception to follow.

Light refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP by following this link.

Target Audience: Family Physicians, pediatricians, hospitalists, nurses, residents & students

Up to 6.25 MainPro-M1/ MOC Section 1

The BC Society of Allergy and Immunology and UBC Continuing Professional Development have joined forces to create a brand new conference! Designed to address identified knowledge gaps, the robust agenda captures the most common issues faced by family physicians in a clinical setting. Participants will hear from leaders in the field on such topics as immunotherapy, food allergy testing and the management of specific allergies.