The Tennessee Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) is a four-way partnership between a research-intensive institution (Vanderbilt University Medical Center), a historically black medical college (Meharry Medical College), an academically-engaged state health department (Tennessee Department of Health), and a sophisticated community-based organization with a 25-year exclusive focus on HIV (Nashville CARES). The Developmental Core (DC) will support and enhance collaborative, interdisciplinary HIV/AIDS research at the four partner institutions. Invigorated by new DC initiatives and leadership, the DC will pursue three complementary objectives: 1) To administer a robust CFAR DC Awards program that supports interdisciplinary HIV research projects and new HIV research pilot projects; 2) To ensure mentoring of investigators new to HIV research, with a focus on early stage, minority, women, and public health investigators, to enhance competitiveness for extramural funding, and; 3) To foster academic skills development and scientific team-building. In 2019, the DC leadership structure transitioned, with John Koethe, MD, MSCI, Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt, assuming the role of DC Director, supported by Fernando Villalta, PhD and Tim Sterling, MD as Associate Directors. This change was in response to extensive strategic planning, with input from the our CFAR External and Internal Scientific Advisory Boards, as part of succession planning for the upcoming funding cycle of this CFAR. The DC will not only provide DC Award funding for promising early-stage investigators but will continue to assure that there is appropriate mentoring together with activities to foster team building. This will help early-stage investigators appreciate the critical importance of effective collaboration as they develop into accomplished academic research scientists. The HIV-focused DC Awards, mentoring, and skills development will be leveraged with outstanding institutional support at Vanderbilt (through the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research; VICTR) and at Meharry (through the Meharry Translational Research Center; MeTRC, and the Center for Health Disparities Research at MMC) to maximize the potential for important, ground-breaking research that will lead to extramural funding support, and that ultimately has substantial impact on the burden of HIV in Tennessee, the nation, and worldwide.
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