Delaware INBRE CSR Core

Project summary – Centralized Shared Resources Core In the past, DE-INBRE developed and sustained core facilities housing the advanced instrumentation and expertise in experimental design/analysis needed to both answer important biomedical research questions and train Delaware’s biomedical workforce. These efforts, in collaboration with Delaware-based COBRE and CTR awards, NIH- and NSF-funded equipment grants, and institutional resources from the DE-INBRE network partner institutions (NPIs), The University of Delaware (UD), Delaware State University (DSU), Nemours Children’s Health (NCH) and the Christiana Care Hospital System (CCHS), created a rich ecosystem of research cores across Delaware. However, these efforts highlighted the reality that research core creation was not enough, and it was also critical for these core facilities to be easily accessible to all of Delaware’s researchers regardless of home institution. In response, DE-INBRE founded its Centralized Shared Resources Core (CSR) whose mission is to ensure equitable access to Delaware’s research infrastructure by serving as a backbone that supports cross core facility and cross institutional communication and collaboration between its twenty-member core facility network located at four of DE-INBRE’s five NPIs to overcome institutional walls and other barriers to core facility access. CSR also supports core staff training, targeted investments supporting instrument acquisition/maintenance, and a core facility access voucher program that allows investigators to generate key preliminary data using new technologies while training early career scientists, including DE-INBRE Student Research Program (SRP) funded students, in the use of state-of-the-art research instrumentation.