May 5, 2021
Last month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis S. Collins announced the UNITE initiative to identify short-term and long-term actions to end structural racism and improve the diversity and inclusion of talent within the NIH scientific workforce.
UNITE is named for five separate, but coordinating objective-based committees:
- Committee U – Understanding stakeholder experiences through listening and learning
- Committee N – New research on health disparities, minority health, and health equity
- Committee I – Improving the NIH culture and structure for equity, inclusion and excellence
- Committee T – Transparency, communication, and accountability with our internal and external stakeholders
- Committee E – Extramural research ecosystem: changing policy, culture and structure to promote workforce diversity
FABBS submitted comments in response to the Request for Information (RFI) notice and is grateful for the input from FABBS board members and member societies to inform our comments.
NIH Opportunities for Behavioral and Cognitive Scientists
The BRAIN Initiative® has re-issued two funding opportunities (FOA) to support small, targeted projects and large, team-based research projects to advance understanding of “the neural circuit basis of perception, emotion, cognition, and other types of behavior by using cutting-edge technologies.” Application receipt deadlines for both FOAs are July 7 and November 10, 2021.
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a Notice of Special Interest focusing on the topics of cognitive, social, and emotional development of children as impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first available due date is June 5, 2021.
