1. What are the most exciting emerging opportunities in public health and biomedical research for the next 3-5 years?

2. What are the associated statistical research topics?

3. What type of resources do we need to build expertise in emerging research topics?

4. What are the best opportunities to diversity funding for the entire department?

Group 1 ("What are the most exciting emerging opportunities in public health and biomedical research for the next 3-5 years?" Ingo Ruczinski, rapporteur):

Emerging Scientific Opportunities

a) Space-time interactions in environmental research
b) Modern diseases: obesity, aging, "the built" and "unbuilt" environments (ie, increasingly sedentary lifestyles)
c) Science policy
d) Disease and health surveillance
e) "-omics"/new technology, high volume data/data mining
f) Unifying themes about evidence across disciplines, consistency of ideas and terms
g) Interactions between behavior and health, non-traditional medicine

Group 3 ("What are the most exciting emerging opportunities in public health and biomedical research for the next 3-5 years?" "What are the associated statistical research topics?" Daniel Scharfstein, rapporteur)

Click here to view Group 3's PowerPoint presentation

In a discussion of Groups 1 and 3's presentations, there was enthusiasm for organizing working groups around some of the commonly-cited emerging areas.  These new groups may not need to meet as often as some of our existing working groups but would serve as educational/collaborative opportunities.  It was noted that while we had already planned to organize our 2005-06 seminar series around particular themes, some or all of those themes (yet to be identified) might be taken from these emerging areas.  It was also suggested that we offer short courses and/or workshops in these areas.  Some of these emerging areas could also tie into the journal club.

Group 2 ("What type of resources do we need to build expertise in emerging research topics?" "What are the best opportunities to diversity funding for the department?" Mike Griswold, rapporteur)

I. Hire "salesperson" to market our intellectual "products," including short courses, software, data sets

a) Someone who knows "the right doors to knock on" (e.g., in industry, government, foundations)
b) Could have this be part of the Center's mission

II. Methodology to analyze complex data sets

a) Translate faculty research into broader use
b) Turn data into useful information
c) Industry will pay for tailored information (apply our methods to their data)
d) Train the trainers (have a short course that educates is in a particular field and then create a "dictionary" to refer back to)
e) Foundations: funding source for young investigator awards
f) Web tools and resources that connect faculty and student interests
g) Course clusters that have "mix and match" modules for particular areas

III. Professional master's degree (targeted towards particular areas)

a) Data mining for biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, health services industries

IV. Money goes to the person at the front of the room

a) Examples are everything
b) Joint appointees translate courses

V. Have an ambassador in each department

a) Joint appointees who help teach our courses and interact around targeted research projects

VI. Emerging Topics

a) Faculty short courses for each other
b) Hire teams of people with specific interests
c) "Hybrid" postdocs

Group 4 ("What type of resources do we need to build expertise in emerging research topics?" "What are the best opportunities to diversity funding for the department?" Elizabeth Johnson, rapporteur)

I. Resources we need:

a) Working computing cluster (keep improving the computing environment)
b) Faculty recruitment specializing in computational biology (should we change our name to the "Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology"?
c) Be more flexible in our curriculum for students with a non-math/stat background, also more flexible in terms and timing of our courses
d) Students need to reach out more to faculty (ie, when searching for RA opportunities, research topics)
    -- develop a faculty/student message board for posting research/thesis topics, RA openings, etc)
    -- encourage students to expand their scientific knowledge
    -- have joint journal clubs with Epi, Medicine, HPM
e) Have faculty member with expertise in public health informatics (ie, surveillance, behavioral science)

II. Funding Opportunities

a) Utilize RA positions in other departments, post-doc positions in Medicine
b) Focus on NIH roadmap
c) Public health preparedness/homeland security
d) NSF
e) Non-profits that focus on a particular problem or disease
f) Health care systems, utilization of medical records databases
g) More training grant, more funded RA positions
More short course development