Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program

Bridging Centers in Life Sciences: The leadership of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (Michael Tiemeyer, CCRC), the Center for Molecular Medicine (Lance Wells, CMM), the Center for Neurological Disease Research (Anumantha Kanthasamy, CNDR), the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases (Dennis Kyle, CTEGD), Center for Vaccines and Immunology (Fried Quinn, CVI), and the Regenerative Bioscience Center (Steve Stice, RBC) propose to form a team that will facilitate cross-talk between center members at all levels (leadership, individual investigators, and trainees) in order to identify multi-disciplinary synergies, enhance funding proposals, and grow graduate/post-doctoral training. Towards this end, we recently held a one-day symposium (“Growing Connections” with the CCRC, CMM, CNDR, and RBC) that was attended by more than 100 faculty members, staff, and trainees. Here we seek to build on the success of this initial initiative by requesting funding to facilitate the following goals throughout the year:

1. Organize semi-annual, one-day workshops that will be cross-organized by the 6 centers, will mirror the principles of our first Bridging Workshop, and will, in particular, provide opportunities for trainees and junior faculty to present their work. Each workshop will have built in time for informal conversations.
2. Generate sense-of-the-community white papers in association with each workshop to be shared within and beyond the Bridging Centers consortium. These multi-authored documents will help build consensus about needs and highlight unexpected opportunities for growth.
3. Initiate regular opportunities for cross-center explorative meetings geared towards specific large, multi-disciplinary extramural funding opportunities and, alternatively, other smaller meetings to share expertise and ideas for enhancing grant writing success.
4. Explore new opportunities for training grants and fellowship. With 2 (CCRC and CTEGD) of the 6 Centers having 2 of the 3 NIH T32 training grants on campus, there is an opportunity to help leadership in the other centers alone or working together (CMM and RBC as a potential example) to generate T32 proposals.

The leaders of the 6 Centers that form the Bridging Centers in Life Sciences consortium recognize the existence of considerable desire among our members to engage with scientists outside of our respective Centers. We see many opportunities for harvesting low-hanging fruit simply by providing a place, a time, and a structure for grassroots interactions.

Team Lead

Lance Wells 
lwessuf@uga.edu 
College: Center for Molecular Medicine 

Team Members

Michael Tiemeyer 
mtiemeyer@ccrc.uga.edu
College: FCAS
Department: Office of Research: Complex Carbohydrate Research Center 

Fred Quinn 
fquinn@uga.edu
College: Vet Med
Department: Center for Vaccines and Immunology 

Anumantha Kanthasamy 
anumantha.kanthasamy@uga.edu
College: Vet Med
Department: Center for Neurological Disease Research 

Steve Stice 
sstice@uga.edu
College: CAES
Department: Regenerative Bioscience Center 

Dennis Kyle 
dennis.kyle@uga.edu
College: FCAS
Department: Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases