M E S S A G E

With the establishment of this website of the Research Grants Administration Office (RGAO) as linked to Research Implementation and Development Office (RIDO) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we hope to institute a revitalized, rational, cohesive and professional research landscape within the health science community in UP Manila. This website aims to inform the public about the existence of RGAO in partnership with RIDO, NIH and Philippine General Hospital-Expanded Health Research Office (PGH-ERHO) to promote a healthy research climate in the university.

This indeed is a pioneering attempt of the leaders of these offices who answered the call of the UP Manila Chancellor Ramon L Arcadio to come up with a website that will reflect the policies governing research conduct in UP Manila primarily to encourage research among its faculty and consultants REPS, trainees (fellows and residents), and students of UP Manila as well as to avoid any possible conflict within the internal policies of UP Manila. This website shall serve as a guide to research investigators so that anyone who wants to do research will be properly oriented on how to proceed from step A to step Z. Moreover, this website will be hopefully updated for time to time. The bottomline with the new policy of UP Manila is not to deviate significantly from the Board of Regents Resolution of 2000 which defined the management of research in the university.

We in RGAO wish to serve as a one-stop-shop for both established and aspiring research investigators and to facilitate the official recognition of individual or group' research from UP Manila and to provide administrative support from affiliated research units. With this limited yet bold step, research in UP Manila hopefully will prosper and attain a global status when brilliant ideas get translated to actual research proposals and their implementation.

The implementing rules and regulations (IRR) that detail the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) will follow soon after the enactment and approval of the Manual of Procedures.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to UP President Emerlinda R. Roman and UP Manila Chancellor for supporting the establishment of RGAO as well as the UP Medical Alumni Society in America (UPMASA) for their pioneering suggestion to create this office. We also thank UP College of Medicine (UPCM) and the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) for their support to RGAO as well as to all component units of the UP Manila for supporting RGAO in the past, at present and in the future.

CYNTHIA I. VALENCIA, MD
Chief Coordinator, RGAO