Consortium of Research Advancement Facilities and Training

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SUMMARY/ABSTRACT To enable Precision Nutrition, a Consortium of Research Advancement Facilities & Training (CRAFT) is proposed that will establish new research facilities and enhance existing ones, ensuring that state-of-the- art equipment and other essential resources are available to COBRE-funded researchers to facilitate the conduct of high-quality, high-impact research employing cutting-edge technologies. New, emerging, and established Cores comprising CRAFT that include Epigenomics, Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Microbiomes, Nutrition, Metabolic Phenotyping, Microscopy/Imaging, and Bioinformatics will be integrated under a unified administrative structure, with directors of each Core forming an Executive Committee that facilitates external evaluations and prioritizes budgets annually. This novel configuration of Cores will allow greater resource flexibility and improved efficiency of research. Herein, we propose to establish a new Statistical Analysis, Nutrition & Diet Core, and to expand Epigenomics, Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Metabolic Phenotyping, Microscopy/Imaging, and Bioinformatics Core Facilities. Education, training, access to equipment and consultation are or will be readily available to investigators at the University in each of these areas, through the expertise of highly accomplished faculty and their support staff, postdocs and junior faculty colleagues. The Executive Committee will contract a third-party expert to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of each of the CRAFT Cores annually to ensure relevance and value for UH investigators. The goal of the CRAFT is to provide resources, expertise, education and training for the advancement of meritorious biomedical research provided by the CRAFT will produce the next generation of research leaders and mentors in the field of Precision Nutrition to ultimately benefit the people of Hawaii and the Pacific region through improvement of health outcomes and quality of life. To achieve this goal, we aim to provide access to the latest technologies/equipment (Aim 1), education and training (Aim 2), and consultation-based expertise (Aim 3) altogether supporting research in Epigenomics, Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Metabolic Phenotyping, Metagenomics (Microbiomes), Microscopy/Imaging, and Bioinformatics. Collectively, the availability of the CRAFT resources and expertise will substantively expand the direction and depth of research conducted by researchers and collaborating groups, and increase the quality of their research, thus positioning them to successfully attain high-impact, peer-reviewed publications and external grant support. By working with our Community Engagement and Outreach Core, we anticipate that the research activities in the field of Precision Nutrition will not only be relevant to community needs (e.g., health disparities that are related to deficiencies in nutrition) but also provide a concerted mechanism to encourage community support and education in the area of basic science, clinical, and translational research. Thus, the CRAFT is unique to Hawaii and is an essential foundation for Precision Nutrition with far-reaching implications to health research nationally.