Program Lead/Presenter: Ellen Liberman, Ph.D., Program Director
Council Date: June 17, 2022 (May 2022 Council)
Goal:
This concept clearance is for the reissuance of PAR-20-051 NEI Center Core Grant for Vision Research. The goal of the National Eye Institute (NEI) Center Core Grant is to build research infrastructure within an institution for the purpose of providing technical support to groups of R01 funded investigators. The Center Core grant makes available shared resources in order to enhance vision research productivity by offering these resources to individual investigators, the cost of which is borne by the Center Core grant rather than the individual R01s. Other benefits gained from sharing resources include the promotion of a collaborative environment and producing cost effectiveness.
Rationale:
The use of centralized facilities and shared resources can be used to achieve an economy of scale. The premise is to make available central core facilities for a group of R01 investigators to enhance their research, consolidate resources, avoid duplication of efforts, and/or contribute to cost effectiveness by providing a service with lower costs or higher quality than could be attempted for independent projects by several individual investigators. By providing instrumentation and facilities that are too costly to be maintained by an individual investigator, the Core Grant makes available critical technologies and widens the base of methodologies that an individual investigator has available. The availability of these resources and facilities that that are accessible to a group of independently funded investigators leads to greater productivity for the separate projects and more opportunity for collaborative interactions between investigators. In addition, this program is designed to enhance an institution's environment and capability to conduct vision research and to facilitate collaborative studies of the visual system and its disorders.
Objectives and Scope:
A center core facility consists of an administrative core plus 3 or more resource and/or service cores.
- The Administrative Core supports the overall management of the Center Core including coordinating and integrating the activities of the Resource and Service Cores
- Resource Cores facilitate the production of materials or support the purchase, maintenance, and technical support of shared equipment
- Examples: electron and confocal microscopy, high throughput sequencing, and imaging
- Service cores support essential laboratory or technical services
- Examples: machine shop and photography services
A minimum of 8 active NEI-funded R01s are required for an institution to be eligible for a NEI Center Core Grant.