This workshop will focus on finding non-federal sources of research funding. During the session, participants will learn tips and procedures for interacting with foundation and industry research sponsors, as well as strategies for using UNC SPIN to search and create alerts for specific funding opportunities.

Since part of the workshop will focus on how you can access the UNC license to the SPIN funding database to optimize your search for funding across sponsors, please register a SPIN User Profile prior to the workshop if you have never accessed SPIN before at UNC. All requests must be verified by an administrator, so please allow up to 1 business day for registration approval. Directions are available at research.unc.edu. Expand the “Registering a SPIN User Profile” section for the instructions.

Please note: This event is restricted to participants from UNC-Chapel Hill. Please use your ONYEN and password when registering for the workshop in the UNC Event Registration System.

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Modular design and automated testing in R

This course will be split over 2 days and offered via Zoom. Attendance is required as the course will not be recorded.

Research is relying on increasingly complex code. However, most academics have not received formal training in software development. This course will introduce participants to some of the best practices of professional software development. Participants will learn to structure their R code into reusable functions and store those functions as separate scripts and/or packages. Participants will learn to write automated tests for their functions, to help confirm that results are as expected and to ensure that future changes to code do not cause unexpected changes to results.

We will also discuss how to create reproducible “environments” that record package versions in use to help avoid package version incompatibilities and ensure that results can be replicated even months or years after the original analysis.

Modular design is best paired with a version control system. We will discuss how modular design practices integrate with Git and Github, and how to set up “continuous integration” so that automated tests are run each time code is changed.

The course will primarily consist of a hands-on exercise to restructure a single long analysis file into functions and automated tests.

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The Informed Consent Process: Why It Matters and How to Get It Right

This hybrid NRP Education session will be presented by Brett Phillips, MA, PMP, CCRP, Clinical Research Program Manager, from the UNC Blood Research Center. Phillips will discuss the historical and ethical significance of informed consent in clinical research, how to prepare effectively for the informed consent process, how to handle difficult conversations, and how to implement post-consent best practices. This session was rescheduled from February 19 due to inclement weather expected on that day.

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