Building Research Capacity for the 21st Century: an MBRS SCORE Proposal

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Delaware State University (DSU), a historically Black university (HBCU), has been primarily a teaching institution for 100 years. Under the leadership of a new president, DSU is undergoing a rapid evolution from a liberal arts college to a full-service university offering doctoral degrees in the sciences. As part of this transition, the University is focused on enhancing the environment for biomedical research by developing the infrastructure for faculty research and student research training. The DSU SCORE program will provide needed infrastructure to remove barriers to faculty research productivity. The program will support renovation and upgrading of common research facilities including a radiation laboratory, tissue culture facilities, fluorescence imaging facility, and the multi-purpose biotechnology laboratory. These Core facilities house shared equipment and resources crucial to the research projects of DSU faculty. In addition to the infrastructure support, the SCORE program will support a SCORE program coordinator who will maintain the common facilities and equipment, assist faculty with ordering equipment and supplies and tracking the orders, maintain service contracts and records, and assist in managing hazardous waste disposal for SCORE investigators. By reducing the administrative burden on SCORE investigators, the SCORE program coordinator will be indispensable for increasing their research productivity. The SCORE program also will support ten biomedical research projects by an interdisciplinary group of faculty from the Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Computer Science departments. SCORE support for these investigators will allow them to develop research programs that will provide research training for both undergraduate and graduate students, and successfully compete for independent grant funding.