SAB Report

The AUA Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) is continuing its work to clearly define and enunciate its mission statement and strategic goals, which are broadly oriented around building and sustaining academic research in the field of Anesthesiology. Ongoing projects include the AUA Speaker Exchange, which is focused on connecting junior faculty with speaking venues including grand rounds, divisional conferences, and research seminars. The goal of this program is to help faculty who are building research careers to make their work known, network with colleagues in their field of interest, and hone their presentation skills. The exchange primarily facilitates virtual speaking opportunities which are easier for junior faculty to engage in, but also has arranged several in-person lectures.  Over 20 engagements have been completed or are in process, and future plans include streamlining the matching process, including venues outside of the United States, and a new publicity campaign to recruit speakers and venues.

Other ongoing efforts include developing content for the AUA meeting. In addition to the traditional scientific oral and poster sessions, the SAB has developed and supported a mock study session, which has been spearheaded by Dr. Jamie Privatsky. This is the first activity of its kind at the AUA meeting, and the goal is to introduce researchers who have not served on study section to the nuts and bolts of how grants are evaluated and scored in order to give interested individuals insight into how to better write, revise, and review grants. The mock study section will include both a career development and a research grant, and it will incorporate highly experienced study section reviewers whose goal will be to teach and mentor participants. In addition to its work on the AUA annual meeting, the SAB has continued to support the AUA Webinar series. Planning is currently under way for a Webinar in the area of anesthetics and the neuroscience of consciousness, which will feature presentations by a panel of experts engaged in cutting edge research in this area.

Looking forward to next year, the SAB plans to develop and deploy a grant repository. The goal will be to build a collection of useful and illustrative grant applications along with summary statements in key areas of anesthesia, critical care, and pain medicine research to help grant applicants learn from the work of others. The target and scope of this project are currently being considered, and we plan to begin collecting grants and organizing them in the fall of 2023, with a goal of opening the repository by 2024.

Finally, the SAB is pleased to welcome Drs. Nader Nader, Matthias Riess, Shiqian Shen, and Creed Stary. We are looking forward to convening in person at the AUA meeting and to a productive year.

Author

C. David Mintz, MD, PhD

Chair, Scientific Advisory Board

John Hopkins University School of Medicine

Baltimore, Maryland