NIH Institutional Training Grant Symposium

On Monday, February 24^th fifty faculty and administrators gathered for the NIH Institutional Training Grant Symposium. The second-annual event is a platform for UCLA’s institutional training grant community to discuss the evolving landscape of training grants, brainstorm strategies to overcome shared challenges, and distribute resources and best practices.

Drs. Steven Dubinett, Dean of the DGSOM, and Alex Bui, Senior Associate Dean for Bioscience Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, kicked off the event with opening remarks acknowledging the rewards and challenges of training grants and emphasizing active efforts by UCLA leadership to address recent changes from the new federal administration. They highlighted the immense value of training grants in fostering innovation, encouraging excellence in biomedical research training, and attracting high-quality trainees. 

Discussion topics included recent NIH instructional changes; consolidation of submission deadlines by NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) and the need for strategic planning to avoid application conflicts; exploration of underutilized ICs and F-awards for new grant opportunities; an open forum discussion regarding common challenges and potential resources to address them; administrative resource presentations on Bioscience Postdoctoral Affair’s F-Award support, the Graduate Program in Bioscience’s Minerva Database, and the Grant Submission Unit’s training grant services; and advanced discussion breakout sessions targeted on topics effecting current training grant PD/PIs, future PD/PIs, and administrators.

For more information or a copy of the event’s meeting minutes please contact the Grant Submission Unit’s training grant team at GSUTraining@mednet.ucla.edu.