Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research (CTIDR)

The Administrative Core (AC) has primary responsibility for overseeing and facilitating all aspects of the Center for Transformative Infectious Disease Research (CTIDR). These duties encompass both the Center’s transdisciplinary, community-engaged research and its research capacity building. As such, the AC will house the Center’s leadership, including PI Dr. Alexander Travis, lead administrator, Angela Downing, and a program manager. The AC will provide structure/ support to test the Center’s overall hypothesis, that community-based research that integrates diverse kinds of data will drive the development of predictive epidemiological models. These will in turn enable the design and rigorous testing of preventative interventions–a transformative shift from responding to outbreaks to preventing them before they occur. To realize CTIDR’s ultimate goal, the AC must fulfill its functions of ensuring efficient administrative and organizational operations. The AC will accomplish this mission through performance of three Specific Aims. First, the AC will provide oversight/governance as a whole, guiding our science to ensure that it is community-engaged, transdisciplinary, and impact-oriented. We will manage our External Advisory Committee and self-evaluation processes, and manage and deploy the Center’s financial and personnel resources. Second, we will ensure timely and efficient flow of scientific information across all components of the Center, and from the Center to external stakeholders. To create the kinds of predictive models that are our goal, we must integrate social, weather, land-use, animal and human health, and vector and pathogen genomic data. To have these models be actionable, and approaches disseminated broadly, we must ensure that they are informed by both the rural communities with whom we work, and policymakers who might use them. Third, a major objective of the P20 mechanism is to build research capacity. Toward this goal, the AC will run competitive pilot grant and Rapid Response Fund grant mechanisms that will favor Early-Stage Investigators. These grants will enable junior faculty to test feasibility of ideas, generate preliminary data, and demonstrate ability to have productive partnerships and community engagement. Lastly, the AC will run a training program focusing on graduate students, post-doctoral associates, and Early-Stage Investigator faculty. This program will enable junior scientists to create transdisciplinary networks and learn the “soft skills” that are essential for health research and impact, such as communicating with audiences ranging from the public to government and the private sector, and across disciplines/professions. Although a focus of our training program, communication and partnership are key principles that guide all the AC’s activities