The National Institutes of Health (NIH) biomedical research workforce working group was established to enhance the pathways for undergraduate and postdoctoral training to provide excellent preparation for biomedical research careers in a timely fashion and ensure future United States' competitiveness and innovation in biomedical research. Plans are underway and the following activities highlight some of the work that NIH is doing with respect to this initiative:
Automated NRSA Training Tables: Instead of requiring elaborate data tables on trainees and faculty association with the training program, the working group is turning these tables into an automated, pre-populated, digital archive of information using an NIH-wide approach similar to that employed by Career Trac, which is currently used by NIH and the centers.
Fed-Wide Researcher Profile System: Five agencies including NIH and various universities are building an online curriculum vitae system called the Science Experts Network (SciENcv), which will permit researchers to use existing data sources to easily assemble and validate the informaton necessary to create a biosketch in the format required by federal research agencies. SciENcv is expected to reduce the burden associated with preparing applications for federal grants and also be a source of information on researchers. The system is being built by the National Library of Medicine.