We did a little fall cleaning over on the CIRM website, moving a few items around with the goal of making our content as intuitive as possible to navigate. All the content you know and love is still there, but some of it might be in a new place.

Here’s what prompted the reorg.

When we first launched the new site last winter we had a section called “Our Funding” that had all sorts of information about (duh) our funding: how to apply, how to manage grants, and various lists of people and institutions that have received funding as well as information about how we target our funding to speed therapies.

It turns out that people looking for information about research we’ve funded weren’t thinking to look under “Our funding.” And since no other section of the site seemed like a likely place to find that content, people sent me helpful emails suggesting that I add pages about where our funding has gone (I politely directed them to that content).

We had another section of the site call “About Stem Cells”. It had background information on stem cells as well as videos, information about our funding for particular diseases, and profiles of people who could benefit from stem cell-based therapies. Many weren’t finding the wealth of content in that section because the title seemed to indicate that the section would only contain background information on stem cells.

So, we reorganized, renamed and rearranged some links.

I hope the results make more sense for our website visitors. All the same content is still on the site, though for regular visitors the change might take some getting used to.

• “Our Funding” now contains only information about how to get and manage grants.
• “About Stem Cells” has been renamed “Our progress“. It contains a wide variety of information about our funding and progress toward therapies including:
• A list of projects that are working toward clinical trials
• Information about how our funding speeds research
• A table showing our funding commitments and funds dispersed
• A list of institutions we’ve funded
• A list of people we’ve funded
• Information about funding for different diseases
• Profiles of people who stand to benefit from stem cell research
• Background information about stem cells
• More than 300 videos by and about our researchers
• Information about how you can get involved in supporting stem cell research

I hope the changes help our visitors. As always, email me if there’s anything you can’t find or would like to see added. Maybe you’ll see your suggestions incorporated into the next spring (or fall) cleaning.

Amy Adams