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FIRST awardees convene to advance scientific excellence 
Marie Bernard, M.D., speaks enthusiastically with her hand raised to an audience at the FIRST program conference. She stands next to a projected slide and behind of a podium with the FIRST logo. The room is full and the audience has their backs to the camera, facing Bernard.
Marie Bernard, M.D., NIH Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity (COSWD) and Co-Chair of the FIRST program, addresses attendees of the FIRST Conference.

The Annual Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) Grantee Conference brought together faculty, staff, and NIH colleagues working to advance scientific excellence through recruitment, inclusion, and promotion of diverse scientific perspectives. The event was held May 6-8, 2024, in Bethesda, Maryland, and covered the goals, milestones, and progress for the FIRST community. The FIRST Program, supported by the NIH Common Fund, aims to establish and sustain institutional environments that benefit from a full range of research perspectives to push forward biomedical, behavioral, and social science innovation. The FIRST program community consists of principal investigators who are already faculty members at their respective institutions. Their institutions are awarded grant funding to facilitate the onboarding of new faculty hires, called “FIRST Faculty” to advance the FIRST mission of scientific inclusive excellence.  

Creative and cutting-edge research projects from FIRST faculty hires were on full display at the FIRST Faculty Poster Session and Networking Reception. New faculty discussed their research programs, including:   

  •  Karen Hicklin, Ph.D., FIRST faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is using her perspective as an industrial engineer to develop mathematical models to optimize healthy outcomes of childbirth and minimize disparities between maternal health populations.   

  • Julia Sheffler, Ph.D., FIRST faculty at Florida State University, is piloting a program for groups of participants to understand how a combination of cognitive behavior therapy and motivational interviewing techniques can be used to engage and retain participants in nutritional programs to improve their brain and heart health. 

  • Alex Guseman, Ph.D., FIRST faculty at the University of San Diego, is working to understand biochemical interactions between proteins and carbohydrates that can aid the design of antivirals to fight infections like COVID-19.   

The meeting also included speakers and panel discussions by FIRST awardees, who discussed best practices and lessons learned for recruiting, sustaining, evaluating, and promoting faculty at grantee institutions. In all, the conference provided an exciting platform to communicate and connect the people that make up the FIRST program, setting the stage for continued progress towards inclusive excellence in the biomedical sciences. The meeting was sponsored the FIRST Coordination and Evaluation Center, supported by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund under Award Number 5U24MD017138-03.   

A man stands in front of his scientific poster to discuss with another man who has his back to the camera.
Alex Guseman, Ph.D., shares his poster with an attendee of the FIRST Conference.

 

 

A woman gestures her hand to a poster to show another woman, with her back to the camera, data on the scientific poster.
Karen Hicklin, Ph.D., shares her poster with an attendee of the FIRST Conference. 

 

 

 

 

This page last reviewed on August 9, 2024

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