the organizational framework, decision-making process for the use of the cores, and plans for quality control are discussed in much greater detail in the 25-page core descriptions furnished below. CORE A: ADMINISTRATIVE/DATA MANAGEMENT CORE Staff: The Administrative/Data Management Core will be directed by Dr. Marian Sigman and Dr. Daniel Geschwind. Dr. Sigman has been Prinicipal Investigator of the UCLA Collaborative Program of Excellence for 9 years and the UCLA STAART for 3 years. Dr. Geschwind is Director of the Clinical Program in Autism at UCLA. They will be assisted by an Executive Committee composed of the Project and Core Pis and will consult with the Internal Advisory Committee, the Community Advisory Committee, and the External Advisory Committee when this is formed. The Data Management Director is Dr. Jeanette Papp who is the director of the UCLA Sequencing and Genotyping Facility. Dr. Papp has been in charge of the data management over the course of the last three years for the STAART Center.
Aims of the Administrative/Data Management Core: Core A, the Administrative/Data Management Core, provides an organizational framework for coordination and integration of resources and activities as well as providing data management and analytical support so as to handle data entry, checking, and sharing with the planned National Database for Autism Research (NDAR). Major decisions about the proposed UCLA ACE will be made by the Executive Committee after consultation with the three Advisory Committees described below. The Internal Advisory Committee will also be used to fulfill the responsibilities of a local DSMB. In addition, the UCLA Administrative/Data Management Core is responsible for two unique programs that have been instituted at UCLA: the monthly Affinity lecture series and the pilot project program. These programs are described in more detail in the expanded descriptions below. CORE B: THE IMAGING CORE Staff: The Brain Imaging Core will be directed by Dr. Susan Bookheimer. Dr. Bookheimer has been a member of the UCLA Brain Mapping Faculty since 1993. She has worked in brain imaging for 17 years and has been active in MR imaging since the inception of functional MRI in the early 1990s. She is an expert in pediatric imaging and through the CPEA network, has been imaging children with autism for 8 years. She will be aided by Dr. Mark Cohen and Dr. Mirella Dapretto. Dr. Cohen is a Professor of Neurology, of Radiological Sciences and of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is an internationally recognized expert in high-speed magnetic resonance imaging and its applications, particularly in the use of ultra-fast echo-planar imaging for the collection of brain activation data sets, and he has been active in the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging since its inception. Dr. Dapretto is an Associate Professor in the UCLA Brain Mapping Center and has worked with Dr. Bookheimer for 10 years on pediatric neuroimaging. She has ample experience in scanning children with autism; as part of our long-standing CPEA fMRI project Drs.Bookheimer and Dapretto have scanned nearly 200 children with autism and several times that number of typically developing children. PHS 398/2590 (Rev. 09/04, Reissued 4/2006) Page 272
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