Martina Schmidt, Ph.D.
October 13, 2023

We were delighted to welcome Dr. Noni Byrnes, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center for Scientific Review (CSR), to the September meeting of our Advisory Council. During her Council presentation, Dr. Byrnes explained some modifications that are coming in the peer review process for NIH grant applications. Today, I want to let you know about some changes she discussed that will have a substantial impact both on investigators who write grant applications and on members of review panels.

Researchers developed a new active learningor machine learningstrategy that outperformed existing approaches for identifying optimal interventions when designing causal models. The new approach, which was developed by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, was recently described in a paper inNature Machine Intelligence. The research was partially funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking candidates for the position of health program specialist.

The positions are in the Basic and Mechanistic Research Branch within the Division of Extramural Research (DER), NCCIH, NIH. NCCIH is the Federal Governments lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine. Learn more about this position and apply.

November 11, 2023; Bethesda, MD

This investigator meeting, hosted by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), on November 11, 2023, will highlight recent advances in interoception research as relevant to the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Functional Neural Circuits of Interoception Initiative.

Invited speakers will focus on basic and human subject research related to functional neural circuit analysis of interoception. The overall goal of this investigator meeting is to review the recent scientific advances on interoception research, facilitate the building of collaborations, and brainstorm future research.

Registration is required. There will be no on-site registration. The deadline to register to attend in-person isOctober 20, 2023. You may register to view the talks (virtual option), but poster presentations will not be streamed.

Learn more and register.

December 14-15, 2023; Virtual

Thisworkshop aims to highlight accomplishments from the last 6 years in advancing scientific research on music and health, develop a blueprint for the next phase of research, and further build the research community.The workshop is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and jointly organized by NIH, the NEA, the Rene Fleming Foundation, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The workshop is cochaired by Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH director, and Ms. Rene Fleming, a renowned American soprano, both of whom will deliver keynote speeches.There will be six scientific sessions during the 2-day workshop: (1) Research on the Science of Music; (2) Research on Music Therapy and Music Medicine; (3) Research on Music Education and Health; (4) Future Research Directions; (5) Networks and Capacity-Building of an Integrative Health Research Community; (6) Integration of Music-Based Interventions Into Health Care Systems. Each session will feature a short musical performance highlighting the scientific theme, followed by scientific talks and discussions with eminent speakers and panelists to enrich the content and perspectives for general discussions.