The Administrative Leadership Core The Administrative Leadership Core (ALC) of this application has been designated to assume the leadership in developing an adequate research environment to conduct the Universidad Central del Caribe to a more productive scientific enterprise. This setting encompasses a Leadership Core with experienced administrators and staff in research management, a Scientific Research Development Unit to foster research faculty development in basic and clinical investigation, and a Data Management and Statistical Research Support unit as a complementary specialized service to the research efforts by the faculty. The ALC will act as the flagship of the overall proposed plan and will be accountable for its execution. The research plan that this administrative component proposes to oversee, contemplates to strengthen the Retrovirus Research Center by providing expert personnel and the HIV and Substance of Abuse Laboratory Core; to strengthen the Neuroscience Research Center, which will nurture an intellectually stimulating environment (mentoring, collaborations, exchange program, a Behavioral Testing Facility and a Neuronal and Glial Culture Facility) for neuroscience research, and create a Cancer Research Center, which will have a cluster of investigators studying dietary compounds as potential cancer preventive and therapeutic agents. In addition, the ALC will continue supporting essential research cores (Optical Imagine, Protein and Nucleic Acid Core Facilities and Common Instrumentation Area and Services); and create a Biomedical Proteomics Facility. Furthermore, the ALC will provide support to five pilot projects in the areas of retrovirology, neuroscience and cancer and implement an RCMI evaluation plan to appraise accomplishments. The judicious Implementation of this plan is considered pivotal to consolidate UCC's past, present and future research efforts.
In the last two decades and a half, UCC Administration has strived to develop an environment capable of sustaining a competitive research endeavor by its faculty. This appeared to be an insurmountable task at the beginning. However, with the inception of the RCMI Program in 1986 and the insertion of human and physical resources, a more promising future was opened to this institution's research efforts. This is evidenced by the increased contribution to scientific knowledge by our researchers, mainly the areas of HIV/AIDS, substance of abuse, neuroscience and now in cancer. Without RCMI, UCC would have not been able to progress and contribute to these research fields.
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