Administrative Core The goals of the Administrative Core are to provide oversight and cohesive organization, so that the Aims across the Center can be achieved with both great efficiency and broad impact. The Administrative Core will be led by Center Director, Dr. Mark Thomas, Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Thomas is a long-standing NIDA-funded investigator who has been researching the neural circuits underlying drug addiction since the late 1990?s. During his tenure at the University of Minnesota (UMN), he has launched two successful Core facilities and played a key role in the establishment of the UMN?s Medical Discovery Team on Addiction (MDTA). Our Administrative Core will be organized to fulfill the following Specific Aims:
Aim 1 is to build and maintain an administrative framework with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. We designed our Center with several groups of investigators and advisors, each with well-defined roles and responsibilities, to carry out the mission of the Center. In addition to the Center Director and the Core co-Leads, these groups include the Steering Committee, responsible for governance of Center operations, and the Scientific Advisory Panel, composed of internal and external Scientific Advisors for each Core who are responsible for technology consultation and development. Working together, these entities will ensure the Center has the maximal impact on local and national science.
Aim 2 is to develop and promote education, training and outreach opportunities for Core investigators. We propose a variety of measures that will promote: a) effective use of the scientific resources in the Center by individual investigators, regardless of their level of prior experience with the technologies; b) widespread dissemination of the science made possible by the Center; c) sharing of the technology and, when feasible, data sets, for use by the international scientific community; and d) outreach activities and events to inform the public of the Center?s scientific research.
