Updates from the Office of the SVPR

First Annual Fall Research Symposium

Our office was proud to host the first annual Downstate Fall Research Symposium & Trainee Research Slam on October 10, 2023. The symposium consisted of a full day of in-person programming that brought together students across all educational levels, post-grads, residents, and faculty to share their research work in an exciting way.

In the first two sessions, we heard research presentations from the 2021 and 2022 SVPR seed grant program awardees, in the form of 15-minute short talks. The talks were informative and enlightening, showcasing the diversity of research on campus. It was great to see the fruits of the Seed grant funding in the first year or two years of work – not only were the research results impressive, but it was encouraging to see how several of the PIs are using their results as preliminary findings for extramural funding applications.

The presentations were followed by the Trainee Research Slam, a fun competition where trainees presented their research with only 3-minutes on the clock and the aid of one static slide. The Slam was split into two categories: non-student trainee competition and the student competition. Dean Allen Lewis (School of Health Professions), Dr. Miriam Feurerman (School of Graduate Studies and College of Medicine), Dr. Elka Jacobson-Dickman (College of Medicine), and Dr. Elizabeth Helzner (School of Public Health) served as judges for the competition, and were tasked with selecting the first, second and third place winners for each category. Additionally, all audience members received a ballot to vote for their favorite presentation for the “People’s Choice Award.”

The student competition prizes were awarded in recognition of Dr. Alfred Stracher, a long-time Downstate faculty member who was the chair of the Biochemistry Department from 1972 to 2006, and whose legacy we are proud to recognize by honoring the next generation of Downstate researchers. We were thrilled to see that the trainees really brought their A-game, finding creative ways to share their research, findings, and break it down to a non-specialist audience. Our judges were so impressed that they decided on-the-fly to add three additional honorable mention awards for students.

Clinical Trials Symposium

Our 1st symposium was held on October 25th. The goal of this symposium aimed to strengthen and catalyze clinical trials on campus by hearing about new and current research endeavors; foster new collaborations and strategize on how to improve and increase CT activity at Downstate. 114 people RSVP’d with 37 in attendance. Dr. Jason Lazar, Interim Dean of the College of Medicine introduced John Boockvar, MD, a Downstate alumna, who gave the keynote address. John Esposito of TriNetX joined us to discuss the value of using TriNetX for cohort identification/analysis, feasibility and site selection and Yihenew Abetu and Sharon Sealy gave an overview of the Clinical Trials infrastructure and the services this division provides. Dr. Thomas Wallach discussed his research and the support he has received from the Clinical Trials team. In addition, there were several breakout sessions including one focused on Diversity in Clinical Trials; the Clinical Trials Advisory Committee (CTAC) and SUNY/RFSUNY’s mission to increase trials across the enterprise.

A big ‘THANK YOU’ to our presenters and panelists: Drs. Marilyn Fraser, Chief Executive Officer, Arthur Ashe; Dr. Maryann Banerji, Professor of Medicine and Chief of Endocrinology; Dr. Steven Levine, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Neurology & Emergency Medicine and Executive Vice Chairman of Neurology; Dr. Thomas Wallach, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Gastroenterology; Kristen Fry, Director of the Clinical Vision Research Center at SUNY Optometry and Alishia Goodridge, AVP for Government and Constituent Relationships. View the opening remarks and keynote address here.

New member of our team......

Nia Smith, Development Coordinator for Research

We welcome Nia to the SVPR Team. She has joined our team as a Development Coordinator for Research. Nia is originally from the eastern part of Long Island. She attended Vassar College, where she graduated with a BA in Neuroscience and a minor in Education. She recently moved from Poughkeepsie to Manhattan and has been adjusting to life in NYC. Nia has prior experience with nonprofit organizations, including grassroots fundraising, and is excited to be getting back into similar work with the SVPR. Nia is proficient in American Sign Language.

Nia will be working alongside Marcus (Gabe) Rodriguez for development and fundraising tasks for the SVPR Office. Some areas in which she will provide assistance include database management, development of an annual giving portfolio, coordination of student awards, and general administrative help. Nia is located in BSB 5-29 and can be reached at x6312.

Nominations for Student Awards

Applications are being accepted for two student awards.

The Robert F. Furchgott Medical Student Research Award

Nominees must be current third- or fourth-year medical students who have conducted basic or clinical research while enrolled at Downstate. MD/PhD students can be nominated but must submit applications based on the research performed while a medical student and not as part of their thesis project.

The award recipient will be selected on the basis of the scientific merit of their research, the student's contribution to and understanding of the project, and the quality of the presentation as determined by the reviewing members of the Award Committee. Abstracts, presentations, grant applications and publications by the student will strengthen their application, students that fail to acknowledge their Downstate affiliation will not be considered.

Finalists for the award will give a 10 to 15-minute oral presentation to members of the Award Committee. The winner will receive a cash award of $2,500. Students are only eligible to receive this award once during their medical school career. Previous winners are not eligible to apply.

Nominations require:

A completed application form
A letter from the research advisor describing the applicant's role in designing, executing, and interpreting the results of the project
An abstract describing the research project (no more than 250 words)
A curriculum vitae

The application package must be submitted as a single PDF file to RFFS@downstate.edu by Friday, March 8, 2024 at 5 PM.

The Alfred Stracher Student Author Research Award

The Alfred Stracher Student Author Research Award was established to acknowledge students who are actively engaged in research in a masters or doctoral program at Downstate and whose research translates to the improvement of human health.

Eligibility:

(1) a current masters or doctoral student in the College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Public Health, School of Graduate Studies, or School of Health Professions, and

(2) the sole author or a co- first author on a published paper (include full citation or notice of acceptance) within the year prior to the application deadline.

The award recipient will be selected on the basis of (1) the scientific merit of their research, (2) the student's contribution to and understanding of the project, and (3) the potential translational impact of the work as described by the student. Selection of the strongest applications will be made by the group of Deans of the Colleges/Schools or their designees.

Submission requirements: Submit the following 4 documents into a single PDF file and send to Marcus.Rodriguez@downstate.edu by Friday, March 8, 2024 by 5:00 p.m.

Complete application form (this will include a brief description of your research and will detail your specific role in the project).
Enclose a copy of the research publication. If the publication is “in press”, please include a copy of the acceptance notification.
Concisely describe (200 words or less) your view of the significance and translational impact of the work.
Submit an up-to-date resume or curriculum vitae.

SVPR Funding for High-Performance Computing Resources

On-premise HPC

The on-premise HPC was obtained through NIH S10 award and made available in early 2023. It includes a modern framework with compute and storage resources. These will be available to the entire DHSU research community. The HPC characteristics are as follows:

Compute: A compute cluster with over 1000 cores, comprising 16 64-core, each with a 7 TB hard drive and 512 GB of RAM memory; one 32-core node with 2 high-end nVIDIA A30 24-GB GPUs, 1024 GB of RAM and 5TB hard drive; and one 16-core "dev" node with 128 GB of RAM and 400 GB hard drive.
Storage: The cluster is served by a 1.2 PB storage device (NVMe/spinning), running the Lustre parallel file system.
Networking: Compute cluster nodes and storage are interconnected through a fast 100-Gb Ethernet network. Offsite access is available via an institutional (science-DMZ) gateway.
Software: The job-scheduling software is Grid Engine.

Maintenance Fee

Access to the on-premise HPC requires renting storage space on at a rate of $50/TB/year. This fee will be used to support continued HPC maintenance. The fee will provide the research group users with access to both storage and compute resources, and can be covered through extramural funding, department/institute funds or any other appropriate source of funding. DHSU researchers are highly encouraged to budget grant funds to extend the HPC – these resources can be prioritized exclusively to their team, but any unused resources can be made available to other DHSU researchers. If such funds are not available, research groups can submit a request with the appropriate justification for this fee to be covered by the SVPR Office (maximum of 20 TB/year). These requests will be evaluated by the HPC Faculty Advisory Committee and the SVPR Office.

Resource Allocation

The on-premise HPC will include a workload manager / job scheduler software with policies to ensure equitable resource distribution among DHSU users. If the demand exceeds the resources, the committee reserves the right to prioritize those researchers with NIH funding, and particularly to those that were listed as potential users in the NIH grant that funded the HPC. More details can be found in the Policy on Allocation of HPC resources. These priorities will be implemented through the job scheduler software.

To get started please complete this online form. This form requests the following information:

HIPAA declaration: all users All users must include a legally binding declaration that at no time will identifiable protected health information, regulated under HIPAA, be stored or processed on the scientific computing framework. We are working to ensuring Google Cloud HPC resources (see below) can be used to store HiPAA-regulated data in the near future.
Fee payment information: Please specify how your research group will cover the HPC maintenance fee of $50/TB/year, and may include extramural funding, department/institute funds or any other appropriate source of funding. To request this fee to be covered by the SVPR office, please specify: 1) the lack of funding sources and plans to obtain funding to cover this fee in the future; and 2) why you need on-premise HPC resources for your research.
Storage space requested: Number of TB/year of storage requested. This will provide access to compute resources.
Desired username: This will be used to access the HPC
Mobile phone number: Will be used to assign a password to access the HPC.

Further details on how to access and use the on-premise HPC can be found in the HPC User Guide. For more information, please contact the HPC Lead (scott.bunnell@downstate.edu).