SPONSORED RESEARCH INFRASTUCTURE PROGRAM (SRIP): EARDA TRANSITION

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching goal of the Extramural Associates Development Award (EARDA) effort at Morgan State University is to attain significant progress toward strengthening the sponsored research enterprise at the University and to establish a high quality research administrative infrastructure. In particular, it aims to leverage EARDA support with institutional resources to increase the University's research vitality, especially in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. Since the inception of the EARDA support, the University has invested significant internal resources to enhance both its physical and programmatic infrastructure. It has attained significant increases in total extramural funding and the number of research application submissions; and it has inaugurated doctoral programs in the biological sciences, public health and engineering. The present continuation application is a 2 -year request for EARDA transitional support to help us build on the progress we have made during the previous funding period, and to institutionalize the infrastructural enhancements already attained. The specific aims are: (1) to award faculty researchers mini-grants for exploratory research, a strategy designed to attract new investigators and research ideas, and thereby enlarge our pool of active researchers, and generate more applications for extramural funding; (2) to offer application development workshops, seminars and technical assistance, which have proven in the past to be effective in stimulating interest in sponsored research, and transmitting research development fundamentals to beginning or inexperienced faculty; (3) to provide free access to subscriber-based research funding databases such as Community of Science (COS) and Sponsored Programs Information Network (SPIN Plus), which facilitate proactive searches for funding opportunities, identification of potential external collaborators, as well as forging new cross-disciplinary partnerships; (4) to contribute to technology enhancements for electronic research administration; and (5) to establish structures and procedures for human subjects protection in research. Our EARDA-driven initiatives will be informed by input from an advisory board, the Institutional Sponsored Research Advisory Committee (ISRAC), consisting of senior administrators and faculty, to provide advice on public health related research opportunities and research development strategies.