KU News Release

Director of communication disorders center to address researchers at KU retreat

Mabel Rice

LAWRENCE — Dr. James F. Battey Jr., director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health, will speak at the 2007 Merrill Research Retreat, an annual gathering of 25 invited researchers and administrators organized by the Merrill Advanced Studies Center at the University of Kansas.

Now in its 11th year, the Merrill Research Retreat will take place June 20-22 at the Barn Bed and Breakfast Inn in Valley Falls.

“Dr. Battey is a leading scientist and investigator in his own right, with very significant discoveries in the molecular basis of the sense of taste,” said Mabel L. Rice, the Fred and Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies and director of the Merrill center at KU. “He’s also involved in planning for future priorities for the National Institutes of Health and in the NIH Knockout Mouse Project.”

Battey is on the Roadmap Implementation Committee for Planning for the National Institutes of Health and is the first recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, an organization that promotes understanding of the senses of taste and smell. He was cited as “the perfect example of the outstanding scientific administrator — an astute scientist/administrator intimately engaged in the affairs of science.” A molecular geneticist by training, Battey recently has provided expert testimony on stem cell research to Congress.

As head of National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, Battey leads an organization with a mission to “conduct and support biomedical and behavioral research and research training in the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech and language.”

Battey will address researchers and research administrators from major state universities in the Midwest including KU, Kansas State University, the University of Missouri, Iowa State University and the University of Nebraska.

“The retreat is a place for researchers — the people running studies and competing for grant money — to talk directly with administrators,” said Rice. “It may seem surprising that this is an unusual opportunity, but in the pressing schedules of today’s universities there aren’t that many occasions for these people to be in the same room, talking about common challenges and trying to find new solutions.”

Rice knows these issues well as a world-renowned researcher and as the director of three of 12 centers in the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at KU. Rice is an international authority on language disorders in children and the genetics of language acquisition. She maintains an active research lab and is best known for her investigation into Specific Language Impairment. In addition to directing the Merrill center, Rice leads the Child Language Doctoral Program, the Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders and the Language Acquisition Studies Laboratory.

“There are many more requests for funding from NIH than they’re able to accommodate,” said Rice. “The proportion of funded awards varies from one institute to another, but it’s in the 10 to 20 percent range of all proposals they receive and most proposals are excellent. So it’s very difficult for meritorious work to be funded.”

The event will provide a forum for researchers and administrators to discuss research planning in this era of increased competition for grant money. The title of this year’s retreat is “Future Directions for Federal Research Funding.”

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