Washington University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center

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DESCRIPTION (Provided by Applicant): The goal of the Washington University Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (WUIDDRC) is to promote cutting-edge Innovation to understand and treat intellectual and developmental disabilities. WUIDDRC would provide core resources for 44 outstanding investigators conducting 62 projects related to intellectual and developmental disabilities. WUIDDRC has four main goals: 1. Promote research on developmental disabilities, through new research opportunities, excellence in research facilities, intellectual stimulation, and Interdisciplinary collaborations. WUIDDRC will focus on investigators studying three complementary but fundamentally interrelated research theme areas: cerebral connectivity, genetics, and environmental influences. 2. Provide efficient, cost-effective, state-of-the-art services and facilities to enhance the quality and productivity of WUIDDRC investigators through five cores: Administration, Biostatistics and Informatics, Human Clinical Studies, Brain Imaging, and Animal Model Studies. 3. Create a strong and efficient infrastructure to support research activities related to developmental disabilities. WUIDDRC will attract established and new investigators to add new knowledge and develop innovations impacting IDD. The strategy is to create opportunities for novel collaboration in a large pool of leading research scientists. 4. Build a mechanism for effective, regular, and frequent communication and coordination among WUIDDRC investigators, researchers in other organizations, clinical providers for children with developmental disabilities, and the local community. Washington University in St. Louis has a long record of excellence in neuroscience. But it has gaps in infrastructure to integrate and coordinate research targeted to intellectual and developmental disabilities. WUIDDRC would make existing, sophisticated, and novel approaches readily accessible to its investigators to close these gaps. A practical outcome is to focus local talent on a pressing health problem that offers considerable potential to advance understanding of human brain development. WUIDDRC will stimulate advances by creating a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment that will accelerate research to directly impact children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.