2017 Creative Scientist Workshop

March 14-15, 2017
Embassy Suites
200 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo, NY 14202

Registration and hotel reservation

To encourage participation from a wide range of CTSAs, we will reimburse the registration cost for the first registrant from each CTSA hub. 

Registration and hotel reservations are now available for the 2017 Creative Scientist Workshop sponsored by the State University of New York at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) with ongoing input from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). This year’s workshop is focused on developing collaborative proposals to address the number one obstacle to successful clinical trials: recruitment of participants.

The Creative Scientist Workshop is not a standard conference. The facilitated workshop format employs a creative problem-solving approach now being used by NSF, NIH and NCATS to catalyze scientific innovation. Workshop attendees will frame the problem space from diverse perspectives and present and discuss a range of innovative case studies and potential best practices.

Most importantly, our deliberate focus on creative problem-solving is designed to catalyze the generation of promising novel solutions and to promote the early development of innovative, transdisciplinary, multi-CTSA grant proposals to NCATS.

As a participant, you will:

• Learn state-of-the-art approaches from throughout the CTSA network and from experts in completely different fields, such as behavioral economics and marketing
• Share your own experience
• Form new collaborative teams around promising, innovative grant proposals
• Advance the evaluation and dissemination of best practices in clinical trials recruitment

Tuesday, March 14 will be a full day of activities – a keynote address and several brief presentations from diverse perspectives intermixed with small-group discussion and activities designed to stimulate clear target questions and novel solutions. As the day progresses, groups will begin to form around promising ideas.

Wednesday, March 15 will be a half-day, wrapping up by 2:30 p.m. Continued group work will be complemented by a keynote address and activities to maximize transdisciplinary collaboration on experimental and quasi-experimental proposals.

Breakfast, lunch and breaks will be provided both days.

Invited participants represent a range of perspectives, including:

Informatics: including Paul Harris, PhD, the creator of the REDCap software platform and co-PI of the new NCATS-funded Recruitment Innovation Center at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Clinical trials investigators: including Jean Wactawski-Wende, PhD, former chair of the nationalWomen’s Health Initiative, the most definitive, far-reaching multi-center clinical trial of post-menopausal women's health ever undertaken in the U.S.

Emerging developments in industry and science: including Brandon Welch, PhD, Medical University of South Carolina, developer of an innovative approach to teleconsent.

If you have questions, contact Erin O'Byrne with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Research reported in this program was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number UL1TR001412 to the University at Buffalo. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.