At the inception of
NE-1201, we agreed on major programmatic objectives and initial project
leaders, as well as defined specific short and medium term research
objectives that were further refined during the annual meeting of
project participants in October of 2013 and then again in a CAP planning
workshop during March of 2014. In brief, we prioritized projects
through four lenses, and asked whether the projects were likely to be:
(i) Transformative – did these have high potential for impact, change paradigms, or address a critical unmet need in MDA; (ii) Distinctive – would these be difficult to support through traditional funding mechanisms; (iii) Collaborative – would these promote truly interdisciplinary research, education or outreach activities; and, (iv) Catalytic
– would these provide a strong foundation for developing future
extramurally funded research, training, or extension activities.
Through this rigorous process, we were able to define key motivating
factors for seven strategic program areas in which to devote our efforts
for the MDA-CAP (see Table).