Coming soon: the MiCM ResearchMatch Program
The MRM Network is happy to announce that we will partner with the McGill Initiative in Computational Medicine (MiCM) for their next iteration of the ResearchMatch Program that aims at connecting researchers in life sciences and clinical domains with colleagues from data sciences.
If a project submitted by an MRM member is selected for funding, the MRM Network will sponsor the project and contribute to the funding.
The next edition will be launched within the next few weeks and details about key dates, eligibility and application process will follow shortly. Information will be available on the MiCM website as well as on our website.
In the meantime, you can find a short descritption of the program below.
MiCM ResearchMatch Program
To realize the potential of Computational Medicine at McGill, there is a need to better connect researchers in life sciences and clinical domains with colleagues from data sciences (e.g., statistics, bioinformatics, medical informatics, computer science, epidemiology). The former has interesting datasets and questions, while the latter can apply or develop quantitative methods to look for solutions to these questions. However, biologists and clinician researchers do not necessarily know where to find people with the right quantitative skills and who would like to collaborate and, conversely, data scientists do not necessarily know who has interesting questions that they could help with.
To facilitate this type of matchmaking, the MiCM proposes to develop the MiCM ResearchMatch Program through the following three steps:
Step 1: The McGill life science and clinical research communities will be consulted to ask for initial project submissions through an application form (available when the competition is open). Keywords along with a high-level summary will be displayed on the MiCM website.
Step 2: The McGill data science community will be asked to look through the list of projects via the MiCM website, contact project leads and, if there is a shared interest, develop a joint MiCM project proposal.
Step 3: Joint project proposals will be submitted, reviewed and a number of projects will be selected for funding.
Funding envelope for each project will be small (10-50K) and will be restricted to funds to plan, organize and analyze data (no data generation). Project duration will be up to one year.
Beyond the projects that will be supported through the first phase of this program, the MiCM will also use the list of submitted projects to develop a scholars program. The idea there is that, for small scale projects, it might be sufficient to have a student working under the supervision of the project PI and a senior data scientist, without the requirement of a formal established collaboration. In this instance, the funding envelope would cover a student stipend.