Outreach and Dissemination Unit

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MC-START will include an Outreach & Dissemination Unit (ODU) that will develop and implement a knowledge translation strategy to maximize utilization of MC-START research discoveries to key stakeholders (cancer biologists, physical scientists, engineers, clinicians, potential industrial partners). We will implement our dissemination activities based on the stages that have been well characterized in the social sciences and described as the "diffusion of innovations" process. In order to further facilitate outreach and dissemination to the cancer biological and physical sciences communities, ODU will implement two yearly seminar series that will each consist of two-day seminars on topics of direct relevance to the PS-OC program. ODU staff will organize these seminars at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Banbury Conference Center and at the Davidson Executive Conference Center at USC. The advantage of having both approaches is that innovative conceptual integrations and novel perspectives developed at the more intimate Banbury seminar can be diffused to the broader physical science, engineering, cancer biology and clinical communities through this second seminar series. Utilization of the Davidson Executive Conference Center at USC will assure "West Coast" outreach and will effectively complement the "East Coast" outreach of ODU's Banbury seminar series. The seminar series, which targets researchers in the physical sciences, cancer biology and engineering, is a natural extension of the Specific Aims of the MC-START projects and participating laboratories. ODU will employ a variety of strategies to develop pilot projects and bring in expertise outside of MC-START to enhance its specific research activities. These include: (1) special sessions during each of the two seminar series in which junior and senior investigators can present novel ideas for experiments that challenge traditional dogmas and which propose to leverage principles from physics, mathematics, chremistry and engineering to examine cancer. These "Linking Physical Sciences & Engineering With Cancer Biology (LIPSENC)" sessions are expected to incubate pilot projects that can be conducted at MC-START. ODU will oversee a Guest Investigator program to bring in these researchers -and their expertise - into MC-START. Small amounts of funding on the order of ~$10,000 approved by the Center Advisory Committee (CAC) will be provided for small scale pilots that generate interesting data and hypotheses for future pilot studies that can be carried out within MC-START.