Core B -Developmental Core

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Core B: Project Summary/Abstract: The UCLA-CDU CFAR Developmental Core encompasses the entire CFAR program, providing logistical and financial support for its key goals. Key focus areas for this Core include cultivating the next generation of AIDS researchers, sparking innovation in AIDS research, and cultivating collaborative trans-disciplinary partnerships, and leveraging CFAR resources. These areas are interdigitated and synergistic under the umbrella of this Core and combine to augment the overarching purpose of the CFAR as a mechanism to coordinate, motivate, and enable ground-breaking research relevant to ending the AIDS pandemic. Inviting and retaining new researchers with new ideas is critical to move research in promising new directions, yet funding for early career investigators remains flat and has declined for mid-career investigators in recent years. Providing mentoring and funding support will be a key goal of this Core, investing in the future of the CFAR partners: UCLA, CDU, Harbor-UCLA, and the Greater Los Angeles VA. Moreover, because traditional models of siloed research are giving way to multi-disciplinary collaborations that attack difficult research questions from multiple angles, this Core will bring together investigators across disciplines and institutions, and encourage investigators outside AIDS research to join forces with CFAR researchers. The sum of these multi-pronged activities will be to generate: • A diverse group of researchers in terms of backgrounds, career stages, and areas of AIDS research • Interactions and collaborations of these researchers, including mentorship relationships • An environment that draws experts in outside fields into AIDS research • An evolving portfolio of new research ideas that is cultivated to yield groundbreaking NIH-funded projects This Core will accomplish these goals through a multi-pronged approach. This will include programmatic and didactic activities related to mentorship and career development (Aim 1), support for recruiting new investigators to UCLA and CDU (Aim 2), administering a pilot funding program for seeding innovative research projects (Aim 3), and leveraging philanthropic and state funds to augment these activities (Aim 4). These aims and the goals they support overlap with each other and with the entire CFAR program.