InterAC Research Meeting –
Interaction and Acceleration of Research
MINUTES
Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Biotech Place
Attending:
Drs. Alexander-Miller, Cline, Diz, Feldman, Furth, Jerome, Joyner, Kaplan,
Kritchevsky, Langefeld, Li, Swords, Tomlinson, Varagic, Wagenknecht
Mr. Batalia, Mr. Butler, Mr. Daniel, Ms. Gibson, Ms. Hooker, Ms. Joyner, Mr.
Kennedy, Ms. Molloy, Mr. Nolan, Mr. O’Byrne, Ms. Pranke, Ms. Russell, Ms.
Smith, Ms. Tiernan, Mr. and Ms. Karen Loy (recorder)
Business Topics:
Dr. Kaplan called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m. and requested a motion to approve the June 24,
2014 minutes. A motion was made, seconded; all in favor, none opposed. Any subsequent changes to
the minutes should be sent to Ms. Molloy.
Announcements:
Mr. Chris O’Byrne, Assistant Dean for Biomedical Research Services, stated that the recruitment for a
clinical informatics faculty member is in the final stages, with at targeted start date in November.
There are two bridge funding support deadlines on September 10th:
Research Program Support
This program provides interim support to maintain critical research laboratory activities for faculty who
have an ongoing extramural grant (e.g., NIH, NSF, DOD), but whose funding has been interrupted by an
unsuccessful competitive renewal.
New Pilot Funding Mechanism
This program provides internal pilot funding for new research projects that have: 1) received a peer
review from an external funding agency, 2) have a percentile score in the outstanding-to-excellent range
for NIH grants (detailed below) or equivalent ranking for other external sponsors, (i.e., DOD, ACS, etc.),
and, 3) have clearly defined key experiments/preliminary data that would address the major concerns of
the review panel.
The instructions for the applications are available through the link below.
http://intranet.wakehealth.edu/Departments/Office-of-Research/Funding-Information/FundingInformation(1).htm
Presentations:
Working with Wake Forest Innovations
Dr. Chris Jerome, Associate Vice President for Contract Research and Development Services at Wake
Forest Innovations (WFI), spoke about WFI’s mission and how they would interact with faculty and
investigators here at the Medical Center and the Reynolda Campus. The mission at WFI is to simplify and
accelerate the journey from discovery to commercialization and that mission having two broad
components:
 Help to transform ideas, discoveries and inventions of faculty into proprietary technologies that
we can license to outside industry
 Help outside industry partners develop their ideas and discoveries by giving them access to the
intellectual and technical resources that exist at Wake Forest
The main focus of Dr. Jerome’s discussion was WFI’s involvement in developing with industry partners to
access the resources here at the medical center.



Fee-for Services
Sponsored Research Agreements
Clinical Trial Partnerships
He also touched on the challenges with industry- funded research. The process for seeking industryfunded research, winning the research and performing the work is very different from executing on an
NIH grant.
Academic Administrative Services Team
Jason Kaplan, Director for Academic Resources, presented the first draft of the ‘Academic Administrative
Services Team’ concept. This is the start of the process to design an impactful and effective team
structure to support the academic needs of our faculty and students.
There were two primary reasons for changing the structure: 1) the health system’s clinical enterprise
structure is changing, and we want to make sure the academic needs are covered, and 2) there is a wide
variation in the skills and services available across the organizational units and the goal is to consistently
offer a higher level of support services available to all faculty and students.
The team concept will consist of an administrative team that will service a grouping of departments,
centers, institutes, and sections. It needs to be a flexible model to provide for cross-training
opportunities to successfully meet deadlines. Organizing the groupings will include quantitative and
qualitative input.
Please send feedback and thoughts directly to Mr. Kaplan (jakaplan@wakehealth.edu) or through the
survey link at the end of his presentation slides. Your input is very important for the proper design of
the team structure.
Click here to view the entire 8/26/14 InterAC presentation.