Arkansas BRIN Project Summary
The Arkansas Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) is a developing network of collaborative partnerships. The partnerships will consist of investigators and students throughout the state, including those at smaller institutions and in private industry. The Arkansas BRIN will provide access to the physical infrastructure and technical expertise at the three leading research campuses of the University of Arkansas system: the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), University of Arkansas-Fayetteville (UAF), and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock (UALR).
All activities of the Arkansas BRIN will be coordinated through the administrative core led by Drs. Lawrence Cornett and Helen Beneš. The three lead Arkansas BRIN campuses will be connected by high-speed communication lines and will be equipped with Access Grid studios to facilitate group-to-group interactions among researchers.
A major feature of the Arkansas BRIN is the Bioinformatics Core led by Dr. Mary Good and including UALR, UAF and UAMS campuses. The Bioinformatics Core will be a statewide educational and service resource that will give investigators and students access to the computational tools needed for multidisciplinary biomedical research.
The Arkansas BRIN will also support a Biotechnology Core consisting of three facilities: Genomics led by Dr. Charlotte Peterson, Proteomics led by Dr. Kevin Raney, and Digital Microscopy led by Dr. Richard Kurten. These facilities will provide investigators and students with access to state-of-the-art instrumentation and offer workshops in experimental design and use. A critically important activity of the Arkansas BRIN is to facilitate recruitment and development of undergraduate faculty who will have the training and resources needed to compete for extramural funding to support their research.
Through the Recruitment and Mentoring Core co-directed by Drs. Helen Beneš and Donald Bobbitt, Arkansas BRIN funds will support the recruitment of highly qualified, research-trained faculty at selected undergraduate campuses including the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Arkansas State University. Established investigators at UAMS, UAF and UALR, who are organized into thematic research groups, will mentor new and existing undergraduate faculty through a summer research program.
The summer research program will also offer fellowships to enable talented undergraduate students to take part in biomedical research in established laboratories. Through these activities, the long-term goals of the Arkansas BRIN are to build biomedical research capacity in Arkansas, increase statewide the number of faculty with extramurally funded biomedical research programs, and to stimulate undergraduate students to pursue graduate studies in biomedical science with specialties in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics.
Updated 12/21/2006
The Arkansas INBRE is Supported by a grant from the
National Institutes of Health
and the
National Center
for Research Resources (P20 RR-16460).
Please contact Caroline Miller Robinson regarding questions or comments about this site or our program. For more information about the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences visit http://www.uams.edu.
