Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Training Program

Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Seminar Series

The Rigor, Reproducibility, and Transparency (RRT) Seminar Series is a series in collaboration with the University of Washington presented by faculty from each of the several ongoing training grants at Fred Hutch and UW. The series is in response to recently mandated RRT training by the NIH for trainees on training grants, F awards, and K awards. Lectures focus on a detailed discussion of common or emerging methodologies with the aim of describing strengths, limitations, and pitfalls so those employing or interpreting the data gain a realistic sense of what can and cannot be learned. Trainees are encouraged to attend lectures outside of their field of expertise as it is likely that they will encounter data from these methods, and understanding how they work and what their limitations are is crucial, so the talks are designed to be accessible to a broad biomedical audience.

All trainees on training grants should check with their training grant director for required attendance, and F & K awardees are strongly encouraged to participate.

The RRT seminar series will be held every 2 months. There are 2 ways to receive credit for participation:

1. Attend the seminar live

2. Watch the video recording of the seminar within 30 days

After attending live or viewing the recording, attendees will fill out a survey and state 3 things learned.

June 24, 2025, 2 PM

Speaker: Aaron Hudson, PhD, Assistant Professor, Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Epidemiology Program, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Public Health Sciences Division, Translational Data Science Integrated Research Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

September 9, 2025, 2 PM

Speaker: Alex Zevin, PhD, Director Genomics, Genomics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

November - TBA

April 1, 2025 - No pranks: assuring rigor and reproducibility in the proteomic analysis of pre-clinical and clinical samples

Speaker: Jake Kennedy, Mass Spectrometry Specialist III, Proteomics and Metabolomics Shared Resource, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

January 28, 2025 - Prediction and design of T cell receptor interactions

Speaker: Phil Bradley, PhD, Professor, Public Health Sciences Division, Program Head, Herbold Computational Biology Program, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

November 5, 2024, 2 PM - The Many Melodies of Protein NMR

Speaker: Peter Brzovic, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington

September 10, 2024, 2 PM - How biostatistics can enhance rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in your research

Speaker: Leila Zelnick, PhD, Research Associate Professor of Medicine (Nephrology), Director of Biostatistics, Kidney Research Institute, University of Washington

June 4, 2024, 2 PM - Evaluating and distinguishing claims from evidence in your research

Speaker: Matt Akamatsu, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Washington

April 2, 2024, 2 PM - Rigorously Assessing Rigor in X-ray Crystallography

Speaker: Roland Strong, PhD, Professor, Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

February 20, 2024, 2 PM - How I ensure rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in my research

Speaker: Oscar Vivas, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington

October 17, 2023, 2 PM - Effective use of mouse models for biological research

Speaker: Andrew Oberst, PhD, Professor, Department of Immunology, University of Washington

September 19, 2023, 2 PM - Reliable and Reproducible Computational Data Analysis and Simulations for Cell Adhesion Biomechanics

Speaker: Wendy Thomas, PhD, Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington

May 9, 2023, 2 PM - Single molecule biophysics: some pitfalls and how to avoid them

Speaker: Chip Asbury, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, University of Washington

March 7, 2023, 2 PM - From negative results to new insights in cell signaling and gene regulation

Speaker: Jesse Zalatan, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington

February 21, 2023, 2 PM - Practical reproducibility in bioinformatics – opportunities, pitfalls, and useful strategies

Speaker: Sam Minot, PhD, Associate Director, Hutch Data Core, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

December 6, 2022, 2 PM - High dimensional analysis of human T cells in health and disease

Speaker: Evan Newell, PhD, Associate Professor, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

October 25, 2022, 2 PM - Statistical methods to enhance reproducible microbiome discovery

Jing Ma, PhD, Assistant Professor, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

May 3, 2022, 2 PM - The reconstitution of mitochondrial fusion

Suzanne Hoppins, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington

March 8, 2022, 2 PM - Effective use of mouse models for biological research

Speaker: Andrew Oberst, PhD, Professor, Department of Immunology, University of Washington

January 18, 2022, 2 PM - Rigor and reproducibility in targeting gene function using viral-mediated CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis

Larry Zweifel, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington

October 12, 2021, 2 PM - On-Target Discovery: Rigor and reproducibility in genetic screen

Speaker: Alice Berger, PhD, Associate Professor, Human Biology Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

September 28, 2021, 2 PM - Protein Conformational Changes: Using Bayesian Inference to Quantify Uncertainty and Make Robust Conclusions

Speaker: Stefan Stoll, PhD, Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington

May 4, 2021, 2 PM - Rigor and Reproducibility in Optical Microscopy

Speaker: Joshua Vaughan, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington

March 23, 2021, 2 PM - Overcoming irreproducibility in hydrogen/deuterium exchange studies: Establishing rigor and reproducibility in a technique approaching its adolescence

Speaker: Miklos Guttman, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Washington

January 12, 2021, 2 PM - Getting the numbers right - common statistical misses in the news and in the lab

Speaker: Ruth Etzioni, PhD, Professor, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

November 17, 2020, 2 PM - Rigor and Reproducibility in Metabolomics

Lucas Sullivan, PhD, Assistant Professor, Human Biology Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

September 15, 2020, 10 AM - Rigor and Reproducibility in Flow Cytometry

Chetan Seshadri, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, University of Washington

July 16, 2020, 2 PM - Studying the impacts of mutations to SARS-CoV-2

Jesse Bloom, PhD, Professor, Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

May 14, 2020, 1 PM - Querying chromatin accessibility in complex tissues with ATAC-Seq

Andrea Wills, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington

Rigor, Reproducible and Transparency (RRT) Training is a required NIH training topic for T32 trainees starting on May 25, 2020.

NOT-OD-20-033: NIH and AHRQ Announce Upcoming Changes to Policies, Instructions and Forms for Research Training Grant, Fellowship, and Career Development Award Applications

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Training has been a required NIH training topic for many years. The UW and Fred Hutch organize a summer Biomedical Research Integrity Series and Discussion Groups to fulfill this training requirement.

NOT-OD-22-055: FY 2022 Updated Guidance: Requirement for Instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research (nih.gov)

Many graduate students receive fundamental training in rigor, reproducibility and transparency through required graduate departmental coursework or by other means. Rigor and reproducibility training is also a fundamental aspect of mentoring and teaching research best practices to early-stage scientists. With that in mind, our intent is to provide more advanced training for senior graduate students and postdoctoral fellows that introduces complex topics of rigor and reproducibility methodology used in the practice of research. This training is delivered via a seminar series with T32 faculty speakers who discuss the techniques and approaches they use to ensure rigor and reproducibility in their research.

For both Fred Hutch and UW trainees: to receive credit for attending you will need to fill out your respective institutional surveys. The surveys will ask you to state three things that you learned from this seminar as proof of your attendance. You will then receive credit on Hutch Learning or in the UW RRT attendee database.

Fred Hutch: For Fred Hutch trainees to receive credit, you can access the recordings and the survey on CenterNet.
UW: For UW trainees to receive credit, you can access the recordings and survey on the UW SOM Research Events and Trainings page.

Please contact Karen Peterson at kpeterso@fredhutch.org if you would like to have your T32 trainees participate in this series. NIH T32 PIs and F/K awardees in the Seattle region are welcome to join the FHCC/UW/SCRI RRT seminar series. We only ask for five things to join and there is no formal agreement:

Suggest T32 participating faculty to present in the series. We have 5 seminars per year and currently represent 20+ T32s across the Fred Hutch, UW and SCRI. See our RRT Seminar Speaker Guidance document for the type of seminar we are seeking. Please suggest speakers who you think could create an interesting and informative talk.
We need at least one T32 PI name and email to subscribe to our RRT Seminar listserv. Please let Amanda Bradley at abradley@fredhutch.org know who that person is
Note that we don’t have the capacity to keep track of all the trainees who go on/off T32s, so we ask that the T32 PI or associated admin send out the seminar info to their current trainees. You will receive an email from the listserv about the seminar and it’s your responsibility to forward the email to your current trainees.
It’s up to the T32 PI to set the number of seminars their trainees must attend per year and to ask their trainees to provide evidence that they are attending (i.e., Hutch Learning transcript or UW Graduate School database).
We ask that the T32 PIs keep in mind that this seminar series only partially meets the RRT requirement and that the T32 participating faculty mentors also have a duty to teach their trainees best practices in RRT methods in addition to any courses/workshops/etc that are required by a graduate program.

Fred Hutch Trainees: Go to Access Hutch Learning on CenterNet

Trainees and T32 PIs who have a UW School of Medicine (SOM) portal account or UW Net ID:

With a UW SOM Portal Account: Research and Graduate Education > Reports > RRT Seminar Attendance Report
With a UW NetID: This and other training grant-related reports are accessible through the School of Medicine’s Intranet site, Training Grants and Resources section of the Research and Graduate Education content area.

Other institutional trainees: if you have a UW Net ID or UW SOM portal account, your attendance will likely be recorded by the UW Graduate School. For others, please contact your T32 Program Director (the PI on the T32 grant) to ask how attendance is tracked for your program or institution.

Advisory committee members as of March 2023:

William Atkins, Medicinal Chemistry, UW
Thomas Hawn, Allergy and Infectious Diseases, UW
Marshall Horwitz, Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, UW
Justin Kollman, Biochemistry, UW
Conrad Liles, Allergy and Infectious Diseases, UW
Andrew Oberst, Immunology, UW
Barry Stoddard, Basic Sciences, Fred Hutch
Ning Zheng, Pharmacology, UW
Larry Zweifel, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UW

Amanda Bradley, PhD

Program Manager, Responsible Conduct of Research Programs, Office of Scientific Career Development

Phone: 206.667.5330

Email: abradley@fredhutch.org

Amber Ismael, PhD

Senior Program Manager, Office of Scientific Career Development

Phone: 206.667.7653

Email: aismael@fredhutch.org

Karen Peterson, PhD

Director, Office of Scientific Career Development

Phone: 206.667.5319

Email: kpeterso@fredhutch.org

Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Training Program

Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Seminar Series

Who is required to attend the series?

How to participate

RRT Seminar Series

FAQs

Amanda Bradley, PhD

Amber Ismael, PhD

Karen Peterson, PhD

Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Training Program

Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency Seminar Series

Who is required to attend the series?

How to participate

RRT Seminar Series

Upcoming Events

2025 Events

2024 Events

2023 Events

2022 Events

2021 Events

2020 Events

FAQs

What’s the difference between RRT and RCR training?

How are the Fred Hutch and UW addressing RRT training?

As a trainee, how do I receive RRT credit?

How often does the seminar occur?

I’m a NIH T32 PI or F/K awardee at the Fred Hutch, UW, SCRI or other Seattle research institution. How can I join this group so my T32 trainees can attend seminars?

I’m a trainee or T32 PI. How can I access my/my trainee’s attendance record?

Do you have a plan for instruction that I can see for my T32 renewal?

How are seminars advertised?

This is a very different type of seminar. Can I see your seminar speaker guidance document?

Do you have an advisory committee of T32 PIS?

Amanda Bradley, PhD

Amber Ismael, PhD

Karen Peterson, PhD