Response to 2009 HRP Investigators’ Workshop Program Survey
At the 2009 HRP Investigators’ Workshop, feedback was requested from the attendees to
help us evaluate the Program. The answers were collected, and the Program is committed to
making the following improvements as requested by the survey respondents.
Workshop Improvements
1. Revise structure of outbrief sessions to better suit the needs of the investigators.
2. Post outbriefs on the IWS website and notify all participants when they can
download them.
3. Arrange period of time where all post-docs can meet each other during the
workshop.
4. Provide more scientific presentations at conferences.
5. Provide more lectures on Constellation and Med Ops at upcoming meetings
6. Include brainstorming sessions between related groups in order to discuss
potential collaborations.
7. Organize oral and poster presentations more appropriately. Only a limited number
of highly meritorious oral presentations should be made.
Programmatic Improvements
8. Improve interface between NASA and NSBRI.
9. Provide clearer guidelines concerning NAR process.
10. Enhance opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas between disciplines/risks.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Very Dissatisfied
Dissatisfied
Neutral
Satisfied
Very Satisfied
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Percentage of Total Responses
HRP Programmatic Survey Results (n=27)
Category
Respondents
University Researcher with Grant from NASA
Researcher with Grant from NSBRI
Researcher with a NASA Contractor
NASA Civil Servant Researcher
Flight Medicine
Contractor in Support Role to NASA
Management
NASA Civil Servant in Management Role
8
10
5
2
0
1
Experience Level
Respondents
< 1 Year
1-3 Years
3-8 Years
> 8 Years
3
10
6
8
1
BACKUP – RAW DATA
Comments on HRP
List activities within the Human Research Program that you feel have been
successful or add value to your work with NASA.
•
The annual workshop, the IRP, and the Evidence Book are successful activities
within HRP.
•
Programmatic research efforts such as the NSCORS and the original NSBRI
format add value to the Program.
•
Independent reviews by the National Academies and/or National Research
Council are quite helpful in assessing the quality of the research conducted by
HRP.
•
The transparency and breadth of the Program is impressive.
•
It is wonderful that HRP personnel are available to listen to the concerns of PI’s.
•
ExMC is making a significant contribution in our return to the moon.
List activities within the Human Research Program that you feel have not been
particularly successful and require attention.
•
It would be useful to fund an investigation to determine risks of cancer or acute
effects from radiation, as opposed to epidemiological studies of astronauts
themselves.
•
HRP should be spending more resources on animal models for moon and Mars.
•
It will be useful to have community involvement in both shaping ISS as a national
lab as well as shaping Constellation hardware development and operations.
•
The Program needs to more clearly identify research needs and also use past
experience in future missions. More emphasis should be placed on creating a
balanced cross-cutting program.
•
There should be more research done on performance enhancement of astronauts.
•
Artificial Gravity should be seriously considered as a countermeasure to address
multiple medical issues.
•
From a programmatic perspective, better collaboration is needed between NASA
and other government agencies.
•
Internal collaboration within NASA should be improved.
•
The interface between NASA and NSBRI is becoming tighter but still needs
work. Other areas that need improvement are the NAR process and evidence book
development.
•
The amount of paperwork required by the Program should be reduced. There
seem to be a lot of requirements for reporting, schedule updates, proposal updates,
etc. that use up a significant amount of time and resources, impacting time for real
work.
List improvements you feel HRP could implement to enhance its value to the
research community or to NASA stakeholders such as the Constellation Program
and Medical Operations.
•
It would be beneficial for the Program to interact more with external entities and
PI’s to identify both needs and solutions.
•
It might be useful to conduct an independent study to evaluate methods used by
NASA to determine risks in comparison with the methods used by NIH, FDA,
and commercial drug companies to develop and commercialize new drugs and
devices.
•
HRP projects could use more involvement from Med Ops and the Crew Office,
and it would be useful for these entities to present at the IWS. HRP try to engage
them early and make HRP requirements part of initial design.
•
It is important that no single person have a disproportionate influence. A
mechanism to bring new, young scientists to the field is required. Many
disciplines are dominated by one or two older PI’s.
•
HRP can use more university participation in space human factors area. In
addition, it important for NASA to provide a consistent funding basis in order to
maintain experience.
•
HRP should attempt to broaden stakeholder definition. It appears to be too crewcentric and driven by short-term Constellation needs.
•
The Program should strive to collaborate more closely with NIH beyond MOU’s.
•
Clearer requirements for space dust design are required.
Comments on Workshop
List activities within the Human Research Program that you feel have been
successful or add value to your work with NASA.
•
It is useful to hear what other researchers are studying and the methodologies they
are using which may be applicable to other areas.
•
The current and previous workshops have been helpful to learn about the needs of
Constellation.
•
The IWS is an excellent chance to interact with other teams and colleagues during
the presentations and poster sessions.
•
The annual update on the NASA “mission statement” is very informative since it
directs research and development to an overall goal.
List activities within the Human Research Program that you feel have not been
particularly successful and require attention.
•
A dedicated post-doc session will be helpful for networking.
•
The oral and poster presentations should be organized more appropriately.
Allowing every submission to make an oral presentation that is only 2-3 minutes
is not informative or productive. When many abstracts are submitted, a panel
should award oral presentations to a limited number of quality abstracts and allow
10-15 min presentations. All others would be awarded poster presentations.
•
The lack of meals together is disappointing, as that was a major time for
networking. In the future, mealtimes together can be paid directly by the
workshop participants.
•
The poster sessions have limited value. Significant resources expended to create
posters and sessions are mostly attended by poster authors, coworkers, and the
internal community.
•
It would be preferable to have joint sessions with related groups (e.g. SHFH &
behavioral health, SHFH & sensorimotor).
•
With the outbriefs happening at the end of the conference, there was limited time
to follow up with researchers on things of interest heard during the outbriefs.
List improvements you feel HRP could implement to enhance its value to the
research community or to NASA stakeholders such as the Constellation Program
and Medical Operations.
•
It will be helpful to have coffee during the meeting.
•
The organizers should email the out-briefs to all conference participants.