The Institute’s Scientific Office (SO) is led by Graciana Diez Roux, Chief Scientific Officer at TIGEM.
The Scientific Office: i. assists the Director in defining TIGEM’s scientific strategies and policies and produces key scientific documents for the Institute; ii. oversees the evaluation of the Institute, and iii. is responsible for the coordination and assembly of institutional grant applications. In addition, this office coordinates the activity of the External Advisory Board organizing and scheduling the board’s meetings as well as setting the agenda and priorities for these meetings. The Chief Scientific Officer duties also include writing the report of the board’s activity and serving as liaison between the board and the group members.

The Scientific Office also assists and guides research scientists during grant application preparation. The SO helps researchers develop a research plan appropriate for each funding agency, which involves defining specific aims, laying out the structure of the grant, critical reading of grant drafts and coordination of the administrative assistance to researchers during grant proposal preparation. This office also helps and guides researchers in the writing and composing of grant scientific reports. In addition, the office performs grant scouting trying to identify the best and most feasible funding agencies. The SO has successfully aided researchers in applications to the EU, NIH, EMBO, among others.

An important aspect for the SO is the coordination and assembly of European Union grant applications by offering TIGEM scientists support in transforming their research ideas into a successful EU grant application. Our SO coordinates and fulfils all formal requirements and scientific evaluating criteria outlined by the European Commission. It serves as liaison between the EU and TIGEM, keeping up-to-date with the EU programme priorities and calls and maintaining and setting communication channels with the commission. The SO is responsible for the management of EU funded projects coordinated at TIGEM, a key aspect behind successful EU funding. The SO presently manages and assists five projects coordinated by TIGEM scientists (EURExpress, A Ballabio; COBIOS, D di Bernardo; EUCILIA, B Franco; AAVEYE, A Auricchio; CardioGeNet, A Baldini).
An important achievement of the TIGEM Scientific Office is the successful funding and management of EURExpress, a large integrated EU project, whose goal is the generation of a gene expression atlas in the mouse by RNA in situ hybridization.