Coming together to Discuss Regional Issues

The 2021 Southeast Regional IDeA Conference was held November 12-14 in San Juan, Puerto Rico this year. It was a time to see how much impact the IDeA program has on the region that includes 6 states: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina and Puerto Rico. The conference was hosted by the The Puerto Rico IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence. The goal of this event was to bring leaders in biomedical research together from across the Southeast IDeA Region and discuss matters of science, administrative policy, and best practices. Apart from these important topics, the conference was a wonderful experience  of the local Puerto Rico culture.

For more details about the event, you can visit the official website: https://www.seidea21.hpcf.upr.edu

A three-day conference of talks, activities, and workshops

NAIPI sponsors the 2021 Southeast Regional IDeA Conference

Dr. Konstantin Gus Kousoulas, the president of the National Association of IDeA Principal Investigators (NAIPI) and COBRE PI for the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network (LBRN) chaired several sessions during the conference and presented an important update on the activities relevant to all of the PIs present at the meeting. One key topic that was the NAIPI website that now aggregates information from the whole network into a single place to demonstrate the program impact, connecting members to opportunities and advocating on behalf of the program. NAIPI also co-sponsored the conference together with other national and regional companies and organizations. Awards from NAIPI were presented to best poster presentations and an announcement was made about future initiatives that NAIPI will support across the network.

Data Science and Bioinformatics Training Launched for NAIPI members and their students.

As a strategic priority for NIH and specifically to elevate the level of biomedical research cross the IDeA network, NAIPI has partnered with Pine Biotech, a biomedical data analytics company based in New Orleans, LA. Elia Brodsky, the CEO of Pine Biotech joined the conference to speak about Data Science training and the ready asynchronous modules made available to all of the NAIPI members and their students to supplement existing efforts and curricula.

This announcement comes after a formal agreement was reached to sponsor training and research solutions offered by Pine Biotech through their Omics Logic portal and the T-BioInfo platform for bioinformatics data analysis and education. After completing a number of pilots with the Louisiana Biomedical Research network and a thorough review by the LBRN Bioinformatics Core, asynchronous modules are now available through the NAIPI registration portal: https://edu.omicslogic.com/naipi-bioinformatics

During the event, Puerto Rico faculty and PIs were able to reach a preliminary agreement to start implementing the training program in Puerto Rico PUIs. Dr. Jose Rodriguez Medina shared his excitement for this initiative that complements plans already in motion to expand bioinformatics literacy and data science training across the region.