Administrative Core

Modified Project Summary/Abstract Section The Administrative Core (AC) of the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (TC CFAR) provides coordinating leadership, management, communication, and networking for all HIV research across Northwestern University (NU), University of Chicago (UC), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Rush University (RU), as well as collaborating effectively with Chicago Department of Public Health, and our health center and community partners. The AC is responsible for all strategic planning, assessment of progress of all Cores and the Scientific Working Groups (SWG), and input/feedback from internal and external stakeholders. Strategic planning led to prioritization of the current Overall aims designed to advance science across the translational continuum from discovery to implementation and to deepen workforce capacity and to invite UIC and RU to join the existing partnership between NU and UC. The AC ensures that TC CFAR scientific Cores (Clinical Sciences Core, CSC; Behavioral, Social and Implementation Sciences Core, BSISC; and Virology and Immunology Technology Core, VITC) support Overall aims with complementarity and synergy, avoiding overlap. The AC ensures they, and the Developmental Core (DC), are well-resourced and leadership strong. The AC also works closely with the DC on mentoring and review processes that enabled robust return on DC investment and competitive national funding of 23 administrative supplements (AS) in the prior term. The AC successfully built ongoing interdisciplinary and cross-institutional research synergies, with significant growth in multidisciplinary projects. Fiscal and administrative management responsibilities ensure that each Core meets its own specific aims and strategic plans. The AC also stewards generous institutional support, dedicating strongly to DC awards. Over the past decade, AC led major growth: NIH HIV funded research base (FRB) grew by 220%, 58% of PIs appearing on the FRB for the first time in in the prior period having previously received DC Awards. The FRB grew by a similar percentage at NU and UC, an indicator that the AC contributes fairly to HIV research growth across the multi-institution TC CFAR and demonstrates our capacity to do the same with new partners. The AC vision is contributing to the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) Initiative in Chicago (through both BSISC and Dissemination Science and Practice Working Group) and nationally as the supplement funded Implementation Science Coordination Initiative (ISCI) supporting over 250 NIH EHE related projects. A continuing focus for the AC is to strengthen and leverage links already accelerating research productivity on comorbidities in HIV driven in part by accelerated aging (The Slowing AgIng Across the Lifespan for Persons with HIV, SAIL HIV SWG). Since our founding, the AC made robust progress toward its goal (stated in the 2014 application) to “become a national model for inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaborations that will add value to the research of all our investigators.”