2008 IBIS Seed Grants Awarded

The IBIS Steering Committee is pleased to announce the IBIS grant awards for the 2008 cycle. The total awarded amount is $649,988 and acts as seed funding to develop further research projects.

We have now completed the review process of the 2008 call for proposals for IBIS seed grants.

In total, there were 12 applications submitted by the deadline of the beginning of April. Of this total, the nine proposals determined to be funded are as follows:

• Advanced MR imaging and spectroscopic tissue characterization in a follow-up study of adjuvant immunotherapy for malignant glioma
  Wong, Kelvin (The Methodist Hospital)
  Shungu, Dikoma (Weill Cornell Medical College)
• Clickable polymerized liposomes as versatile targeted multi-modality imaging agents
  Cai, Chengzhi (University of Houston)
  Li, King (The Methodist Hospital)
• Imaging the Effects of p38 MAPK Signaling Inhibition in Multiple Myeloma Therapy
  Ballon, Douglas (Weill Cornell Medical College)
  Chang, Chung-Che (The Methodist Hospital)
• Magnetically guided multimodal optical probe for intraoperative imaging of the metastatic status of lymph nodes
  Tung, Ching (The Methodist Hospital)
  Brazdeikis, Audrius (University of Houston)
• Mitral Valve: 3D-Image sequence analysis and mechanical modeling
  Azencott, Robert (University of Houston)
  Canic, Suncica (University of Houston)
  Glowinski, Roland (University of Houston)
  Guidoboni, Giovanna (University of Houston)
  Zoghbi, William (The Methodist Hospital)
  Little, Stephen (The Methodist Hospital)
• Novel Optical Functional Imaging Method for Assessment of Cardiovascular Diseases
  Larin, Kirill (University of Houston)
  Lumsden, Alan (The Methodist Hospital)
  Morrisett, Joel (The Methodist Hospital)
• Plasticity in Speech Perception of Early Bilingual Children
  Hernandez, Arturo (University of Houston)
  McCandliss, Bruce (Weill Cornell Medical College)
  Zevin, Jason (Weill Cornell Medical College)
  Karmonik, Christoff (University of Houston)
• Radio-frequency induced thermal destruction of cancer cells
  Wosik, Jarek (University of Houston)
  Shi, Zheng-Zheng (The Methodist Hospital)
• Systems bioinformatics and bioimaging approach for discovering target motifs
  Zhou, Xiaobo (The Methodist Hospital)
  Deng, Zhigang (University of Houston)

Details of the review process

The 2008 review process was performed by identifying a group of external (to IBIS) candidates with research areas overlapping one or more of the proposed projects. Potential reviewers were asked to participate in the process until we had 2 or 3 reviewers for each proposal that met the conditions of the Call for Proposals.

Reviewers were asked to use the NIH (1-5) rating method for the following areas

1. scientific merit
2. technical merit
3. relevance to IBIS mission
4. ability to achieve future funding and
5. overall.

Reviewers were also provided room for commentary as well.

In the case where there was significant discrepancy in the rating of two or more reviewers, they were provided each others reviews (anonymized) and given the opportunity to adjust their respective scoring if they wished.