Funds from OSDD
* Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup SrinivasanRamachandran | 23 Oct 2009 - 08:45 Discussions on this Page FundsFromOSDDDiscussions| ResourceBookmarkForm | |
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| Title | Funds from OSDD |
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OSDD is a drug discovery project and the budget outlay has to be spent judiciously for drug discovery process and it should not be seen as another fund granting agency. It is not a capacity building project and its purpose is not to fund setting up of infrastructure in institutions, for which other government schemes are available. OSDD will operate mostly on a pay for the services model. However, OSDD will fund consumables and chemicals wherever necessary. OSDD community has a common pool of funds and those who seek grants should approach it with a philosophy of sharing of resources. OSDD funds are precious as its objective is to deliver drugs to the poor. OSDD will consider providing fund for augmenting existing infrastructure in colleges and universities which has a potential to do experiments relating to drug discovery as a mere top up measure. The purpose is to train students on actual drug discovery process. Dr. Brahmachari recommended the Committee to define problems that will help in understanding biology of the pathogen, reduce toxicity of the existing drugs or find innovative ways to shorten duration of treatment, etc and post them on the OSDD portal. These problems may be clustered together based on the deliverables. Once a clear aim of these projects is decided, experiments may be performed with computation on demand. In all projects where OSDD is funding, targets and deliverables have to be detailed and release of funds should be related to such deliverables. Speaking on behalf of the Committee Dr. Gokhale stated that funding will be released on a quarterly deliverable basis. Dr. Viswakarma stressed on designing a strategy to find a new drug. He suggested that 50% focus should be on value-adding to existing drugs or failed molecules and the other 50% focus to understand biology of Mtb in order to find better targets. In three years the aim should be to at least put 5 molecules in phase 1 clinical trials. Hence the Committee will look at the projects seeking funds as how each project seeking funds will help in drug discovery. Projects seeking funding requirements above Rs. 25 Lakhs will be evaluated by the Senior Science Committee in addition to the open Peer Review done through the online system (see below). The budgetary requirements and the scientific merit including alignment to OSDD goals will be very strictly evaluated by the Senior Science Committee. The Senior Science Committee comprises of: Dr. Rajesh Gokhale, Director, IGIB, Delhi Dr. Ram Viswakarma, Director, IIIM, Jammu Dr. Tushar Kanti Chakraborty, Director, CDRI, Lucknow The Senior Science Committee took the following administrative decisions: i. In order to have continuity with the decisions taken for sanctioning of funds below Rs. 25 lakhs, Dr. Ramachandran, Scientist, IGIB, who is a convener of the committee which recommends funds below Rs. 25 lakhs will be a permanent invitee to the deliberations of this committee. ii. Dr. Anshu Bhardwaj, Scientist IGIB, will act as the Secretary of the Committee. She shall be responsible for convening the meetings of the Committee, recording the minutes of its deliberations, and ensuring follow up of the decisions of the Committee. For projects seeking funding less than Rs. 25 Lakhs: The process followed by OSDD will be fully transparent based on online evaluation of projects in full view of the OSDD community. A science co-ordination committee will have to examine the proposals and give their comments online with regard to the objectives, and deliverables of the project. In this exercise the primary focus will be on scientific merit of the project. The convenor of the committee may co-opt any OSDD member of specific expertise. However, if experts in the area would give general comments based on the principle of the project, then these also may be considered by the committee based on the scientific values of those comments. Subsequently in the second step, the Budget committee will evaluate the budgetary requirements in order to meet specific goals of the project. At this stage proposals may be asked for further revisions as may be required in order to optimize the requirements. Sharing will be encouraged so that funds are spent judiciously. Procurements will also be examined for sharing of resources. Procurement of equipments are generally advised against unless it may be required by the community as part of infrastructure. The Project Director can approve budgetary requirements upto Rs. 25 Lakhs. The science co-ordination committee comprises of Dr. S. Ramachandran, scientist IGIB, Delhi (Convenor) Dr. Amit Misra, scientist, CDRI, Lucknow Dr. Shekhar Mande, scientist, CDFD, Hyderabad Dr. Rajesh Gokhale, Director, IGIB, Delhi Dr. Javed Agrewala, scientist, IMTECH, Chandigarh The budget committee comprises of Dr. S. Ramachandran, scientist, IGIB, Delhi Dr. Andrew M. Lynn, Associate Professor, JNU, New Delhi Dr. G.P.S. Raghava, scientist IMTECH, Chandigarh Equipments for computational requirements: The following Technical Empowered Committee will consider and recommend the proposals for procurement of software, hardware and services: Dr. GPS Raghava, Scientist, IMTECH Dr. Vinod Scaria/Dr. Debasis Dash, Scientist, IGIB Dr. Andrew Lynn, Professor, JNU The recommendations of the Technical Empowered Committee will be approved by Project Director and the necessary purchase orders and payments/funds would be released by CSIR Headquarters/IMT/IGIB. The same committee will consider and recommend a general rate list for items of work to be performed for OSDD. Dr. Naresh Kumar, Head, RDPD will approve the general rate list. The Project Director/Head, RDPD will exercise the powers to approve expenditure and items of work up to Rs.25.00 lakhs. The items of work/expenditure above Rs.25.00 lakhs will require the approval of DG, CSIR. This approval will be obtained by Project Director/Head, RDPD General Guidelines: 1. OSDD is an open source project and therefore PIs are advised to adhere to the principles and norms of Open Source. 2. Transparency is held topmost. The activities adhering to the above mentioned principles are planning the works and reporting the methods and results. All methods and results must be reported online in full view of the OSDD community. The description must be sufficiently detailed so as to allow independent checks for reproducibility or verifiability as may be required any time in any project. 3. Kindly mention the objectives, importance of doing the project in OSDD, justifications for the budgetary items and a rigorous and detailed work plan. Reviews usually get delayed if these items are not presented clearly. 4. In case you start a project from a result obtained from another project funded by any other agency, then it is PIs responsibility for getting necessary approvals. OSDD will not be able to enter in to any sort of arbitration with any funding agency in this matter. 5. Kindly do not book expensive running cost items such as AMCs etc. These if at all to be considered will require full commitment from PIs to offer those equipments for the entire OSDD community. Usually working the logistics for meeting such a requirement is complex and budget committees are reluctant in considering such requests. 6. Build your project on your core strength and ask for only that much funding as required for the deliverables. OSDD may not be interested in building infrastructures or add ons such as extending licenses or annual extended warranties etc. These are very complex items to fund and therefore the committees may not consider them. 7. Ten Chemistry and twenty Biology "CSIR Centers of OSDD" will be established in different universities of the country to enable students pursuing B. Sc and M. Sc degrees in these universities to work for OSDD. The cost of the equipment, chemicals and consumables for these centers will be borne by CSIR within limits of earmarked funds. In this regard, many colleges have been evaluated through a detailed process and proposals are under consideration for their budget funding. 8. The project will hire the services of 20 women scientists for different elements of work for OSDD project. These women can operate from home for four hours every day and contribute to the project. These women could be paid as per the approved rate list for the jobs undertaken and/or contributions made by them. PIs may consider engaging women scientists in their projects subject to this cap. Project Monitoring The project will be monitored at three levels: - All Project Investigators (PIs) will be sending computer generated weekly progress report to the Project Director who would apprise DG, CSIR and Chief Mentor of the project. - Monthly monitoring meetings will be attended by all PIs as well as Head, RDPD and other colleagues of RDPD associated with the project. - Quarterly monitoring meetings will be chaired by DG, CSIR along with national experts and mentors to be identified and associated with the project. - Annual monitoring meeting for the project will be organized wherein national and international experts would participate in the meeting to provide any mid-course direction, if so needed, to the project. The eminent national and international experts in relevant fields would be associated with the project as mentors and will be paid TA/DA and sitting fee for attending meetings. Consultancy amount wherever applicable, shall be paid to such experts/mentors as per existing CSIR guidelines. |
| Tags | OSDD, Grants, Committees |
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Topic revision: r2 - 15 Nov 2009 - 20:10:43 - FaezKhan
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