Administrative Stucture

Although the Center’s research is extensive, without coordination the effort would not be a Center, but only a collection of individual projects. To develop a Center in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, we created a structure to facilitate communication and collaboration among projects and result in a Center in which investigators are aware of the research being conducted by others and share a commitment to work together toward a common goal.

Research projects within the Center are grouped into three working clusters according to their common aims with regard to the disease/disorder or problem being addressed or the mechanisms being investigated. Each working group has an informal coordinator who takes the lead in identifying opportunities for collaboration and for organizing regular meetings of PIs to discuss progress and cooperation between projects. The working groups are Clinical Trials (Milgrom, coordinator); Community Outreach (Weinstein, coordinator); and Basic Science (Dale-Crunk, coordinator). These clusters play an important role in facilitating communication between the Center’s core projects, but they also provide vital support and mentoring for pilot and affiliated studies.

In addition to the regular meetings of the informal clusters we hold quarterly meetings of all Center investigators. At each quarterly meeting, we have presentations from one of the working groups giving an overview of the research being conducted and progress being made, alternating among the three groups during the year. The quarterly meeting of Center investigators is followed by a social hour, allowing and encouraging interactions with investigators who gave presentations.

Finally, to take advantage of these interactions or other new promising directions and to facilitate the development of new research ideas emanating from them, we make available each year funds to conduct pilot or feasibility studies that could lead to new R01 proposals. The availability of such funds is announced each year to the broad research community at UW and to our collaborating institutions to encourage even wider participation. For more information on Pilot Studies and available funding, please visit our pilot study page.