NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) and the University of New Hampshire will use a $15.4 million award from the National Center for Research Resources to form a network with eight undergraduate institutions in New Hampshire that will support biomedical research by faculty and students, according to DMS.
The National Institutes of Health funding was awarded under NCRR's IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program, which was designed to promote the development, coordination, and sharing of resources and expertise in order to increase the number of competitive investigators in networks in rural regions.
"One of the goals of the INBRE grant is to provide access to the state-of-the-art tools now available in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics," Steven Fiering, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology and genetics at Dartmouth, told GenomeWeb Daily News in an e-mail.
"This will involve presenting lectures and short courses about these tools at the partner schools, offering hands-on training in the use of these tools, and facilitating access for students and faculty at these institutions to Dartmouth's instrumentation and expertise," Fiering added.
This INBRE grant will fund a network that includes Plymouth State University; Keene State College; Colby-Sawyer College, St. Anselm College; Franklin Pierce University; New England College; River Valley Community College; and Great Bay Community College.
"The ultimate goal is to provide research opportunities for undergraduates to experience the art of scientific discovery under the close direction of faculty researchers in the state of New Hampshire," Ronald Taylor, professor and director of the Microbiology and Molecular Pathogenesis Program at Dartmouth, said in a statement.
"We also want to retain biomedical investigators in the state – to keep and develop the talent we have here," he added. "Some of these are researchers who haven't had the experience to get preliminary results that would allow them to compete for research grants on a national level. NIH-INBRE will provide resources and develop a statewide research culture that will help to achieve these goals."