DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY
Departmental Research Committee
Minutes of Meeting held on Thursday 21st May 2015
Present: Jennifer Potts (JRP) - Chair, Jane McCarthy (JM), Ian Graham (IAG), John Pillmoor (JBP),
Peter McGlynn (PM), Simon Baker (SB), Michelle Squires (MS), Betsy Pownall (MEP), Paul Kaye (PMK). Dawn Coverley (DC), Jon Pitchford (JP)
Ian Jennings (IJ) in attendance
Action15/28 / Apologies for absence
Apologies were received from Simon McQueen-Mason, James Chong, Will Brackenbury and Maggie Smith.
15/29 / Minutes of the last meeting of 16th March 2015
These were agreed.
15/30 / Matters Arising
From minute 15/03 – Fellowship support
JRP reported that the Fellowship webpage was now live and that a link to it from the Biology home page had been added.
From minute 15/04 – Minutes of the Opportunities and Enterprise Group meeting held on 6th November 2014
JM reported that PURE support are still working on an area in PURE for research interest and that she would follow this up. JM confirmed that the OEG terms of reference had been circulated.
JM reported that she had looked into the departmental Twitter account and that it was now active again.
From minute 15/07 – Equipment
JBP reported that the DBIS response to the consultation on long term capital investment would be picked up through the BT Steering Groups.
From minute 15/08 – Open Access Publishing
JRP reported that she had been in contact with Thom Blake, Research Support Librarian regarding compliancy and this was ongoing. To bring back to next meeting. / JM
JRP
15/31 / Data storage
JRP reported that the University has given DRCs responsibility for
Research Data Management implementation and that there is the
expectation that every PI has a data management plan. IJ reported that each PI is to be allocated 1TB for their group. It was agreed that additional data storage should be requested on research grant applications and that it should be added to the cost checklist. JM to do and JRP to provide justification. It was also agreed that there should be a link on the research web pages to the University RDM policy. JM to do. IJ to update DRC on progress at the next meeting. / JRP/JM
15/32 / BTF Report
JBP gave the following updates:
1 Following external advertisement and interview, a bioinformatician had been appointed to the Fera project on the 10 month contract.
2 The FEG-SEM associated with Peter O’Toole’s MRC Optical Imaging grant will need to be returned at the end of the grant in March 2017.
3 The 2015 calls for equipment bids are expected to be launched later in the year and the department need to be prepared. This was noted.
4 The BDC have recently taken delivery of an Illumina MiSEQ and access will be on the same basis as the existing IonTorrent sequencer.
15/33 / Grant equipment update
The equipment initiatives and grants submitted requiring matched funding were noted.
15/34 / Research funding
JRP proposed that there should be a standing item on the agenda to discuss research funding, successful grant applications and future opportunities. JRP also proposed that there should be a more formal link up between DRC and OEG and that Maggie Smith should be a member of DRC. This was agreed. JM to amend Terms of Reference. / JM
15/35 / Minutes of the BTF Research Committee meeting held on 27th April 2015
Peter McGlynn gave the following updates:
1) BTF Research Highlights
It had been suggested to move to one hour seminar slots out of term time. It was agreed to do three per year so all labs can be involved.
To start at Christmas.
2) TF costing initiative – proposed Peer Review form changes
It had been suggested that the best way to encourage staff to include more TF costs on grant applications was to include more TF usage questions on the Peer Review form. Slight changes to the wording on the proposed form and an extra section on external facilities were agreed, JBP to amend and send out to foci leaders for their comments. JM to circulate new PR form when changes made. / PM
JBP/JM
15/36 / Funding opportunities for postdocs
SB reported that he had been looking at funding opportunities for postdocs and that currently there was no mechanism for identifying or advertising schemes. JM to look into this. / JM
15/37 / Ethics
DC said that the department needs to capture potential ethically sensitive projects that are not picked up during grant review. MS said that consultancy work should be included in this and that information should also be collected from Emeritus staff. It was agreed that the department need to know what information to collect and how to store the information and that a process was needed to cover everything. It was also agreed that this should be pushed up to University Ethics
Committee and take it from there. DC to do. / DC
15/38 / Any other business
There was no other business.
15/39 / Next meeting
The next meeting will take place on Thursday 24th September 2015 at 1.30pm in room K126.