Welcome to the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC) web site. The mission of the Kansas IDDRC is to support high quality basic and applied research relevant to the causes and prevention of mental retardation and developmental disabilities. We also support research aimed at the prevention and remediation of some of the many secondary conditions associated with mental retardation and developmental disabilities, such as difficulty in language acquisition and behavior problems.
For over four decades our Center, in partnership with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and other federal agencies, has played a major role in generating effective behavioral interventions aimed at the causes, prevention, and treatment for mental retardation and related development disabilities, and in delineating the basic knowledge of the underlying biology of typical and atypical development. We have accomplished this by uniting researchers and clinicians in a common effort at three critical sites within the state of Kansas: the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Juniper Gardens Children's Project; and the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.
The Kansas IDDRC comprises over 60 nationally and internationally recognized faculty researchers, with more than 70 research programs funded by the NIH and other organizations, focusing on various aspects of mental retardation and developmental disabilities. Thematic research areas include Language, Communication Disorders and Cognition in Mental Retardation; Risk, Intervention and Prevention in Mental Retardation; Neurobiology of Mental Retardation; and Cellular and Molecular Biology of Early Development. Together these research programs comprise a strongly interactive matrix of overlapping interests and approaches, thus promoting interdisciplinary collaborations with investigators within the Kansas IDDRC as well as throughout the country and the world.
In order to provide Kansas IDDRC investigators with world-class research support, the Center has spearheaded efforts to bring the latest in behavioral and biomedical research technology to the state of Kansas. Core support services and facilities include: design and implementation of measurement tools for behavioral research; experimental design and analysis; bioinformatics; genomics expression analysis; histology and biological image acquisition and analysis; digital video acquisition and editing; and 3-D image manipulation and model output.
We invite you to learn more about our Center by touring our web site.
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| Peter G. Smith, PhD Co-Director (left) |
John Colombo, PhD Director (right) |
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The University of Kansas Medical Center