The majority of the Awards Committee�s efforts this year have been in
reviewing applications for six different awards: the APS Postdoctoral
Fellowship in Physiological Genomics, the Research Career Enhancement Award,
the Teaching Career Enhancement Award, the Authur C. Guyton Award for
Excellence in Integrative Physiology, the Shih-Chun Wang Young Investigator
Award, and the Lazaro J. Mandel Young Investigator Award.
Based on discussions last year, we changed the application review process
so that all reviews are conducted in more of an NIH study section format.
Depending on the number of applications for each award, applications were
reviewed initially either by the whole committee or by three assigned
individuals. During the conference, applications were discussed one-by-one.
After the discussion, all present Committee members rescored the
application. After the conference call, Committee members submitted their
new scores to the National Office, where they were tabulated, and the
recommended recipients identified.
While we received a number of very high quality applications, the total
number of applications submitted this year was less than last year.
2002 Awardees
Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards. We received 15 applications for the three
Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards in Physiological Genomics. The Committee
recommended that the awardees be Brian R. Wamhoff, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA; Malcolm A. Lyons, The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor,
ME; and Ana Diez-Sampredo, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA. Based
on the new funding scale, these awards were funded at $32,000 for the first
year and will be funded at $35,000 for the second year.
The Research Career Enhancement (RCEA) and Teaching Career Enhancement (TCEA)
Awards. The RCEA and TCEA Awards are designed to enhance the career
potential of regular APS members. The RCEA supports short-term visits to
other laboratories in order to acquire new skills or attendance at a course
directly related to a particular research methodology. The TCEA provides
funds for the development of innovative and widely applicable programs for
teaching physiology.
This year we received eight RCEA and one TCEA applications. We
recommended funding of five RCEA awards to Caryl Elizabeth Hill, Yale
University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Paul Sown MacLean, University
of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO; Paul Joseph Fadel,
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX; Lius A.
Martinez-Lemus, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX; and Kenneth
Joseph Rodnick, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID.
Young Investigator Awards. The APS has three Young Investigator Awards:
the Authur C. Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology, the
Shih-Chun Wang Young Investigator Award, and the Lazaro J. Mandel Young
Investigator Award.
The Authur C. Guyton Award was established in 1993 and is awarded to an
investigator who has demonstrated outstanding promise in research that
utilizes quantitative and integrative approaches and feedback control system
theory for the study of physiological function. The recipient cannot hold an
academic rank higher than Assistant Professor. This year we received five
applications for the award. The Committee recommended that the awardee be
Simon C. Malpas, Auckland University Medical School, Auckland, New Zealand.
We received four applications for the Shih-Chun Wang Award. This award,
established in 1998, is awarded to an investigator with an academic rank no
higher than Assistant Professor, who has demonstrated outstanding promise in
research in any area of the physiological sciences. This year�s Committee
recommendation is Jeffrey T. Potts, Wayne State University school of
Medicine, Detroit, MI.
The Lazaro J. Mandel Award was established in 2000 in memory of Dr.
Lazaro Mandel, Professor of Physiology at Duke University. The award is
given to an individual demonstrating outstanding promise in epithelial or
renal physiology, who holds an academic position no higher than Assistant
Professor. We received six applications for the award this year, and
recommend the awardee be James D. Stockand, University of Texas Health
Sciences Center, San Antonio, TX.
Other Issues
The Committee met at EB 2002 in New Orleans. We reviewed our process for
reviewing and recommending awardees for the Awards we handled. In addition,
we discussed all of the objective and action items in the 2002 APS Strategic
Plan that pertain to our Committee. As our past chair, Tom Peterson,
recommended last year, APS established a task force to review the entire APS
awards program. This task force had met by conference call a couple of times
before the EB meeting. We discussed a number of the issues that the task
force had brought up.
Our longest discussions were around the recommendations for broadening
the focus of the postdoctoral fellowship awards and increasing the number of
awards. The Committee felt unanimously that it was a good idea to broaden
the scope of the fellowship awards, particularly to include translational
research, and to increase the total number of fellowship awards. We also are
in support of the current APS plan to increase the fellowship stipend to the
point that it is about $5,000 more than an NIH NRSA award. We believe this
will increase the prestige of the award.
Action Items
We requested that the APS Council consider two recommendations.
Implementing a travel grant for senior postdoctoral students and junior
faculty program that makes available funds for 20 $1,000 travel grants for
basic and clinical science senior research postdocs and junior research
faculty to attend focused research meetings directly related to their
research program. We feel that such a program would permit junior
researchers to update and/or broaden their expertise in newer areas of
research or in the use of newer techniques, resulting in advancement of
their research programs.
Implement a Grant-In-Aid program specifically targeted to a basic or
clinical science researcher at a �smaller� institution who is collaborating
with an established researcher at a �larger� institution. We feel that such
a program would facilitate development of stronger researchers at �smaller�
institutions, or institutions with limited resources.
Pat Preisig, Chair
Council Actions