Robert Renden, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology and Cell Biology
How did both of these awards contribute to your professional development and how did they contribute to advancing data governance efforts at UNR Med?
“The Faculty Development Awards were exceptionally useful to me as I was trying to establish my lab. They provided timely funding to generate critical preliminary data (in the case of labeling/EM work, as well as generation of AAV reagents), explore a novel hypothesis (AAV-CRISPR), and attend an international conference (Gordon Conference, travel funds).”
What achievements resulted from the awards?
“The Faculty Development Awards did contribute to my professional development. FDA support permitted us to generate a novel viral reagent permitting ATP measurements in the presynaptic terminal, in real-time. Preliminary data using this reagent was included in two large grants from NSF (CAREER) and NIH (R01). The EM work was included in a recent R01 grant proposal that was not funded, but was scored in the first round (33%). Of course, the successful grants improved my annual review. I am up for P&T next year, and plan to include the FDA awards.
It’s difficult to quantify the ROI in science in general, but these funds allowed me to keep my lab afloat prior to landing the grants, which only started this year. They also freed up monies that could then be spent on other material, personnel, et cetera.
Would you recommend following this approach to career development to other faculty members?
“I would recommend this program for other faculty, primarily because it can fund a small pilot study which may otherwise be costly to devote funds towards.”