Call for Ideas for Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Initiative
From Dr. Jean Morrison, University Provost and Chief Academic Officer,
Dr. Michael Collins, Chancellor, UMass Chan Medical School,
Dr. Alan Garber, Provost, Harvard University,
and Dr. Marty Schmidt, Provost, MIT
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has invited Letters of Intent to establish a second CZ Biohub, expanding on the success of the initial San Francisco-based CZ Biohub. Following a productive initial meeting of members of our regional biomedical community, we are writing to put in place a mechanism to collect ideas for focus areas to highlight in an eventual Letter of Intent. We envision a proposal that would establish a partnership of Boston University, Harvard University, MIT and UMass Chan Medical School, along with our affiliated hospitals and institutes. The LOI is due by April 1, 2022 so the timeline is short. We invite all members of our scientific community, spread across multiple institutions, to contribute ideas for focus areas, and propose a two-pronged mechanism to consider them.
First, we have started a Google slide deck to collect ideas from the community. The link is here. Please note the instruction slide at the top of the slide deck and the three, color-coded template slides (one for each category of theme) to copy for your idea slide. Each slide will contain one big idea, with sections to briefly describe the big idea, suggestions for related ideas, keywords, and the names of people interested in working on that idea. All ideas are welcome.
Second, we have started a Slack channel for people to communicate. The link is here. Eventually, subchannels could be created to flesh out ideas that seem promising.
Because the timeline for the LOI is so short, we suggest a deadline of one week for creation of the slides with your big ideas (Wednesday, February 9, 2022), and one additional week for nucleation of the ideas and creation of ½ to 1 page descriptions (Wednesday, February 16, 2022). To integrate this community feedback into a set of ideas for possible focus areas of the LOI, we are establishing a “Scoping Committee” of scientists from our four universities who we will ask to review all of the suggestions and then discuss their recommendations with us. This will be facilitated by a community meeting on Wednesday, February 23 for presentation and discussion of the nucleated big ideas in a short (lightning) talk format (5-7 minutes each). Please stay tuned for the time and zoom link to the community meeting.
Please forward this message to others in your departments and scientific circles who you think might be interested.
We look forward to hearing and discussing your ideas!
Call for Ideas for Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Initiative – 2.3.22