Director's Message August 2007
Welcome to our latest issue of NICE News. It has been a while since the last issue, a testament to the exciting and busy summer we have had. In my message to our members this issue, I want to tell you about two important events from this season: our Mid-Term Review wi th the NCE Directorate and our Annual NICE Knowledge Exchange. We are also pleased to announce two new sections in our newsletter, one for our students and one for our new international partners.
May and June were very important months for the NICE Network. NICE was initially funded by the Networks of Centres of Excellence (New Initiative Grant) for a four-year period, with the second half of the funding contingent on a satisfactory mid-term review in 2007. In May, we submitted our Mid-Term Review report. In June, we faced an in-person review in Ottawa, with reviewers from the NCE as well as independent experts from numerous fields, including aging. Our team made a 30 minute presentation on the progress of the NICE Network, and responded to questions from the reviews for another hour and a half.
I am very pleased to report that funding for NICE has been renewed for the remainder of its term, October 2007 through October 2009. I want to thank those who helped me in our “review” team — Anthony Lombardo, Peter Donahue, Judith Wahl, Sandi Hirst and Laura Watts. And, of course, many thanks to our Network members, whose hard work and dedication over the past two years have helped make NICE a success.
Many of you attended our first Annual NICE Knowledge Exchange in April, in Toronto. We were happy to host 88 of our Network members, a number which includes 26 of our students. The first day of our conference featured guest speakers on knowledge translation, and we heard updates from our Committees and Theme Teams on their progress over the past year. During the second day, our members were very productive in work meetings with their respective Committees and Theme Teams. We also held our first Annual General Meeting on the Friday, and held a meeting with our international partners on the Wednesday before the conference. I also had the pleasure of hosting our members at the Scientific Director’s Dinner on the Thursday evening. All in all, it was a very exciting and productive meeting for our Network Members. Our 2008 Annual NICE Knowledge Exchange will be held June 4—6, 2008 — stay tuned for more details! I also want to introduce you to two new sections of our newsletter. The first is dedicated to the work of our new international partners. As many of you may know, the Network was awarded an International Partnership Initiative Grant from the NCE and the International Development Research Centre. This grant has allowed us to expand our Network internationally, with nine new partners across the globe. Read more about this grant and our new partners on page 5, in the new International Partners section. We’ve also added a new section for our student members. We will use this space to feature opportunities for our student members. Also note our featured bio in this issue, on Dr. Martha Donnelly, Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia, and the Chair of our Sub-Committee on Researcher Training.
Finally, I would like to draw attention to our feature article of this issue, on page 2. This is a summary o f a paper co-authored by François Béland and our Chair of the Board of Directors, Dr. Howard Bergman. In a review of articles published in the Journals of Gerontology: Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences in 2006 (May 2007; 62A(5), 516- 517), Editor-in-Chief Luigi Ferrucci named Dr. Bergman’s paper a “gangbuster,” one of the 12 “outstanding articles” considered “milestones in the geriatric literature . ”Congratulations!
Sincerely, Lynn McDonald Scientific Director, NICE
posted: 10/9/2007
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