? Core A: Administrative Core This Administrative Core (Core A) will have two major functions. First, it will provide administrative support and intellectual enrichment for the investigators in this Program. Due to the fact that the Program includes five senior investigators from three institutions (UCSD, Salk, U Colorado), each in a different department, Core A will be essential to integrate the disparate administrative hierarchies. Additionally three different vertebrate species will be used for this work (human, mouse, frog), with the need to move animals between institutions. Because of this, and because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the Program, a central Administrative Core is essential. The Core will work closely with the administration of the three partner institutions, as well as administrators, business managers, and scientists in each department involved. The Administrative Core will: 1] Provide and encourage intellectual collaboration between members of the Program Project, Internal and External Advisory Panels, university faculty who are not members of the Project, and outside consultants. 2] Assist individual PIs in budgeting as well as coordinating travel, purchasing, meetings, and seminars. The Core will achieve these objectives in several ways: 1] We will support a Slack instant messaging/video portal for routine programmatic issues. 2] We will have monthly two-hour seminars for all Program members in this program via video conference. 3] We will have semiannual review by the Internal Advisory Group, and biennial Retreats by the External Advisory Group, with presentation by each PI. We will also have the Directors of Core B and C present new data, analytical techniques, and technological innovations, especially in the rapidly moving fields of genomics, epigenomics, and bioinformatics. Seminars will average 10-12 per year, with each Project or Core presenting 2-3 times per year. Internal and External Advisors are selected to advise each project specifically and will work directly with his/her PI regarding their progress, to suggest possible new directions for both the individual Projects, and potentially the overall Program. In addition, we propose to have two whole day symposia during Year 2 and Year 4, overlapping with the External Advisory Group meetings, in which will invite scientists whose work is on the same aspect of the research of each project. During these symposia, each of the PI?s will present their progress over the preceding two years in the outside experts will be asked to critically evaluate progress of each Project.
