CORE A - Administrative Core

Administrative and biostatistical activities of the Program Project will take place in Core A. Drs. Isales and Hamrick will be responsible for the scientific oversight of the PPG, the direction of research emphasis and the fiscal administration. Both Drs. Isales and Hamrick will work with members and Project and Core Leaders in order to effectively resolve all personnel and fiscal issues that may arise. Both will play an active role in coordinating the mentoring activities for junior faculty and minority summer students. Dr. Isales will oversee compliance with regard to AU’s Institutional Review Board's policies, including the requirement that all Project and Core investigators and staff maintain certification in AU’s Research Ethics Training Program. The main purpose of the Biostatistics and Data Management component is to bring together the information from different sources into an integrated database, and to coordinate the statistical analyses with the focus being on the main goals of the PPG. The Biostatistics faculty will help the investigators of the projects to choose appropriate experimental designs and analytical techniques tailored to address specific hypotheses, especially, focusing on justification of the data analysis method to be used for each type of data generated. The Biostatistics and Data Management component will serve as the focus for data compilation, quality control, data analysis and interpretation support for the PPG. Thus the overall aims of this Core are: (1) Coordinate and oversee the research efforts of the individual projects to maximize project synergy and ensure administrative and regulatory compliance; (2) Provide mentoring on aging research to junior faculty who are part of the PPG efforts.; (3) Work alongside leaders of the T35 award to coordinate summer rotations for minority students who are interested in aging research; (4) Assist investigators of the projects to choose appropriate experimental designs and analytical techniques tailored to address specific hypotheses, focusing on justification of the data analysis method to be used for each type of data generated; (5) Provide ongoing statistical consultation to research projects related to issues such as experimental design, sample size determination, aptness and validity of models to be used, power considerations, deep-sequencing data processing and modeling, statistical bioinformatics support, interpretation of results, and preparation of manuscripts for presentations and publications; (6) Maintain a dataflow system that insures accuracy, security, validation and archiving of all data collected for the different projects. In sum, Core A will promote synergy between the Projects, ensure data validity and integrity and assist in training the next generation of aging researchers.