For NINDS, 2014 was marked by momentous transition, major accomplishments, and exciting opportunities.
Dr. Story Landis, our Institute Director of the past 11 years, stepped down in October, but not before overseeing the completion of the John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center. As one of the largest neuroscience centers in the world, this 500,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility brings together 800 scientists in 85 laboratories from nine Institutes, and represents just one of Dr. Landis’s remarkable accomplishments during her tenure here. NINDS’s intramural scientific director, Dr. Alan Koretsky, is working with his counterparts in the other Institutes to realize an integrated vision of the Porter Building. The inter-institute collaborations it seeds are sure to bear fruit for years to come.
Along with NIMH and eight other NIH Institutes and Centers, NINDS issued the first round of grants for The BRAIN Initiative℠, an interagency collaboration to revolutionize our understanding of the human brain. The projects supported by these 58 awards aim to develop and apply cutting-edge technologies to create a dynamic picture of the brain in action. We have released the next wave of BRAIN Initiative funding announcements and plan to issue more announcements early in 2015.
Other key programs supported by NINDS in 2014 include:
- The second Epilepsy Center without Walls that works to uncover the causes of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP)
- Centers for Collaborative Research in Fragile X focused on identifying gene modifiers that cause tremor/ataxia, epilepsy, and primary ovarian insufficiency in persons with the Fragile X mutation
- A coordinated research effort on Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
We also endorsed and reiterated the importance of increasing fundamental knowledge of the nervous system, an Institute commitment underscored by the release of a new funding announcement specifically focused on expanding our basic neuroscience research portfolio. More broadly, to maximize our support for investigator-initiated research, we made every effort to maintain a stable funding payline despite the challenging fiscal situation that NIH continues to face.
Finally, NINDS-supported research resulted in numerous advances in the areas of basic, clinical, and translational science over the past year. We’ve highlighted a number of these advances in this blog post.
It’s been an eventful and productive year. In 2015, we look forward to continuing our mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about the nervous system and using that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.