Auburn CCTS Partner Network Site Lead Dr. Tom Denney stands with CCTS Director Dr. Robert Kimberly.More than 120 people joined us for our biannual Open House on Wednesday, August 1. In addition to the usual festivities, the event featured information about our latest learning, funding, and research facilitation and collaboration opportunities. Attendees included the new UAB School of Public Health Dean, Dr. Paul Erwin, who stopped by the CCTS Open House as part of his first full day on campus, as well as CCTS Partner Site Leads Dr. Art Tipton (Southern Research President and CEO) and Dr. Thomas Denney Jr. (Director, AU MRI Research Center, and Mr. & Mrs Bruce Donnellan & Family Endowed Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University).
Attendees flocked to tables laden with hot hors-d'oeuvres and even hotter information about our newest supports. Below is just a sample.
I-Corps@NCATS
CCTS Executive Council Member Dr. Molly Wasko discusses commercialization of biomedical innovations with CCTS Investigator Dr. Stephen Aller, an expert in crystallography scaffolds of proteins.
CCTS leads an interdisciplinary team of business, engineering, and medical investigators from nine Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Hubs charged by the National Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Science (NCATS) with developing a translational version of the National Science Foundation’s wildly successful I-Corps™ program. The goal is to better prepare the nation’s biomedical scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the lab and broaden the impact of their science. CCTS offers a three-week I-Corps@NCATS Bootcamp every September that introduces teams to the I-Corps@NCATS methodology to connect with their customers (registration opens soon!). A five-week regional “short course” offers biomedical teams an opportunity to compete for $50,000 in funding from NSF.
iPanels
To complement our suite of highly successful panels in support of research at all stages, we now offer a unique opportunity for researchers who have made scientific discoveries with commercial potential. Innovation Panels (iPanels) connect such investigators with the entrepreneurial expertise they need to start, or take that next critical step, on the commercialization journey. Request an iPanel via our Panels webpage or emailing
CCTS Engagement of Communities Program Director Dr. Shauntice Allen (far l) chats with new UAB School of Public Health Dean Dr. Paul Erwin (center).
2019 Interdisciplinary Network Pilot
The CCTS serves a regional population heavily burdened with cardiometabolic, vascular, and cancer-related diseases. Through our annual Interdisciplinary Network Pilot Program, we seek to (a) ameliorate disparities in these and other conditions that disproportionally affect minority and special populations across the CCTS Partner Network and (b) develop the future translational research workforce in a spirit that fosters collaboration, team science, and innovative discovery. We recently launched our 2019 Pilot—learn more by visiting our Pilot web page, where you can download the RFA. Pre-applications are due on August 15.
K and K2R Writing Groups
The CCTS Training Academy is always one of the busiest tables at our Open Houses.
Our popular K Writing Group comprises six sessions that provide guidance and strategies for writing a mentored K-award grant. Learning objectives include which mentored K works best for physician-scientists and how to pick the right NIH institution for your application. Group size is limited, and you must be eligible to apply for a K award to join. Start dates vary, but in general the groups begin 10 weeks out from the next standard NIH deadline. The group meets on Fridays, 11-12:30 pm. If you are planning to submit an R-award grant in June 2019 and are committed to dedicating weekly time and energy, you may wish to join our new K2R Writing Group. For either opportunity,
Clinical Trials Initiative
The CCTS Partner Network offers exciting multisite study and innovation collaboration opportunities.The CCTS provides leadership for human subjects research through nearly a dozen different initiatives that scale from efforts at the Hub to activities engaging the Partner Network as well other members of the national CTSA consortium. These include implementation of the OnCore clinical trial management system and the GreenPhire payment system at UAB; connecting investigators to industry-sponsored clinical studies via TriNetX; establishment of the Southeast Health Alliance for Research (SHARe), a transformational research enterprise in support of multisite studies that builds on the strengths of the CCTS Partner Network; and acceleration of novel clinical trial strategies via participation in the CTSA Trial Innovation Network (TIN).
For more information from our Open House, see the list of materials below.
August 2018 Open House Drawing Winners
A typical CCTS Open House table, rich in info as well as calories.Congratulations to our winners listed below, who visited every CCTS station at our Open House and had their names randomly selected. Each will receive a special CCTS mug filled with our best swag.
Kate Wesson Sides
Clinical Trials Administrator
Department of Psychology
Shali Zhang
Research Associate
Dept. of Medicine, Division of Nephrology
CCTS Communications Staff Kate Matthews welcomes the first attendees.Jose Luis Roig Lopez
Researcher V
Dept. of Optometry & Vision Science
Sandra Colloway
Program Coordinator II
Dept. of Surgery, Division of Cardiovascular/Thoracic
Marina Mazur
Researcher V
Cystic Fibrosis Research Center