The
Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center News
(Formerly the Kansas Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center)
Supported by NICHD HD02528
Volume 9, No. 4,
September-December 2008
Editor: Karen Henry, Life Span Institute Assistant Director for Communications, for Peter Smith, Director, KIDDRC, and John Colombo, Co-Director, KIDDRC
Call for
newly funded projects
New and
improved Core Workflow software
Charles Greenwood wins Higuchi Award
Groundbreaking of new site for Juniper Gardens
ChildrenŐs Project
Leslie Heckert selected for first Osborn Professorship
Hiroshi Nishimune makes
cover of Journal of Cell Biology
Research
Design And Analysis Unit March 26 Workshop
Happy New Year!
The KIDDRC management and staff want to take this opportunity to wish all of our members and affiliates a very happy, healthy and productive 2009! As we enter the New Year, please keep in mind that the KIDDRC is here to help you meet your research needs. Please contact core A staff, John Colombo or Peter Smith, if we can help by providing support for your developmental disabilities-related research projects.
Call for newly funded projects
Do you have projects relevant to intellectual and developmental disabilities thatŐs been funded recently? If so, the KIDDRC Internal Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) is meeting at the end of January to consider new or renewed projects for admission into the IDDRC portfolio.
Application for membership is quick and easy. All we need is a copy of the front page with dates and amounts, the abstract, your NIH biographical sketch, and a brief statement of relevance (John and Peter can help with this).
Benefits of membership include access to core resources, deeply discounted fees for services where applicable and subsidies on certain activities such as brain imaging. The KIDDRC supports a wide variety of services to KU-Lawrence and KUMC investigators including rodent behavioral assessment, hardware and software fabrication, statistical and bioinformatics consultation and analysis, microarray expression and SNP analysis, confocal imaging, laser capture microdissection, brain imaging, and graphics and poster preparation. For a complete listing, see http://kiddrc.kumc.edu/.
New and improved Core Workflow software
A constant challenge for the KIDDRC is keeping track of all the various projects we are supporting. This is important for you, the investigator, as you want to make sure that your important project doesnŐt Ôfall through the cracksŐ. ItŐs important for the KIDDRC to make sure that all our staff are being utilized most effectively and to be able to assess the relevance of our services.
To meet these needs, KIDDRC staff have developed a new software system called ReqMan (Request Management System). This system is scheduled to become operational in all scientific cores beginning in January 2009. For most users, this addition will be relatively invisible. However, in the future you can expect more detailed reports on services provided by the KIDDRC. Also, where fee for service cost recovery applies, you can expect more rapid tracking of jobs, more detailed invoices and timelier billing.
Welcome to new Kansas IDDRC staff
The purpose of the
IDDRC programs is to provide staff support for relevant research projects. Accordingly, our successes and failures
often ride on the competence of our staff.
We are fortunate to
have several highly qualified new KIDDRC staff members on hand. They include:
Byunggil Yoo, M.S. Byunggil received his MasterŐs of Science in Computer
Sciences and bioinformatics. He is responsible for developing and managing
online software tools that support KIDDRC research activities. He also provides support to the KUMC
Information Resources department and the Kansas IDeA Biomedical Research
Excellence program. He is located
in room 2062 of the Kansas Life Sciences Innovation Center on the KUMC
campus. Contact: byoo@kumc.edu, 588-5966.
Sumedha Gunewardena, Ph.D. Dr. Gunewardena received a doctorate in
Bioinformatics from Oxford University, and joined the KIDDRC following a
fellowship at the University of Toronto.
His specialties included using computational biology to identify
transcription factor binding sites, and application of biological pathway
analyses to interpretation of microarray data. In addition to the KIDDRC, Sumedha provides support to Cell
and Developmental Biology Center on Biomedical Research Excellence and the
Kansas IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence. He is located in room 2027 of the KLSIC
building at KUMC. Contact: sgunewardena@kumc.edu, 585-6878.
Luke Mahoney,
B.S. Luke received a bachelorŐs
degree from KU, and now serves as the rodent biobehavioral specialist at KU
Lawrence. Contact: lpmaho@ku.edu, 864-5720.
Please feel free to
contact these staff members directly if you have any questions.
Charles Greenwood wins Higuchi Award
Charles
Greenwood's life's work in "doing science and doing good" was
recognized with the Irvin
Youngberg Award for Applied Sciences, a Higuchi - Endowment Association
Research achievement Award, one of KU's highest research awards. Charlie is a longstanding researcher at
the urban Kansas City Kansas site of the Juniper Garden's Children's Project.
Greenwood is the scientific co-director of the KIDDRC Core B, the Biobehavioral Measurement Core, as well as professor of Applied Behavioral Science, director of the Juniper Gardens ChildrenŐs Project in Kansas City, Kansas and senior scientist at the Life Span Institute.
Groundbreaking of new site for Juniper Gardens ChildrenŐs Project
KIDDRC
will gain a new site for research and collaboration opportunities when one of
its major components, the Juniper Gardens ChildrenŐs Project, directed by
Charles Greenwood, locates to the ChildrenŐs Campus of Kansas City, Kansas.
The development, a three-story 72,000 square-foot facility on 3.5 acres at the corner of 5th Street and Minnesota Avenue, will offer early childhood education, educational outreach for parents, family support services and eventually, health, mental and oral heath services. The three major tenants will be Juniper Gardens, KUMC's Project Eagle and the Family Conservancy. The structure is scheduled to be completed by January 2010.
The venture represents a historic cooperative venture of several agencies and programs serving children, youth and families under one roof in the urban core of Kansas City, Kan. by the nonprofit ChildrenŐs Campus of Kansas City, Inc.
Martha Staker, director of Project EAGLE and chief executive officer of the Children's Campus, announced that the Board of Directors has already raised 90 percent of the funds needed for the project, including what Staker described as "$11,000 in small bills from families and program staff." Greenwood, also a CCKC director, was a major force behind the campusŐ success.
Joe Reardon, mayor of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County, said, "This is the right spot for this campus, at the center of our city. I can't think of a better message to send than that we care about our children."
Leaders representing the University of Kansas, the KU Medical Center, county, city and state government, the U.S. Congress and the private sector joined children and parents to officially break ground for the $15.5 million construction project on October 7.
Four groups have donated at least $1 million to the project, including the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Charitable Trust, Dickinson Financial Corporation, J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation and the Unified Government.
Leslie Heckert selected for first Osborn Professorship
Leslie Heckert, professor,
Molecular and Integrative Physiology, was named the first Marion M. Osborn
Professor for Reproductive Sciences. The professorship was endowed by Jim
Osborn, who currently resides in Hawaii.
According to KIDDRC Director Peter Smith, ŇDr. Heckert is a
preeminent researcher in the field of molecular biology of early
development. I cannot imagine a
more qualified investigator to receive the Osborn Professorship. As a long
standing member and leader of the Early Development theme, LeslieŐs achievement
underscores the strength of the research going on within the Kansas IDDRC.Ó Congratulations, Leslie!
In addition to the Marion M. Osborn Professorship, Jim and Marion OsbornŐs donations over the years have fully supported the highly successful Kathleen Osborn Memorial Lectureship, which completed its 36th year this year, and have also provided funds in support of the Gil Greenwald Symposium, which is now in its 4th year and growing stronger, according to Smith.
Heckert serves KIDDRC as a Theme 4 leader.
Hiroshi Nishimune makes cover of Journal of Cell Biology
Hiroshi Nishimune,
assistant professor, Anatomy and Cell Biology, 
was
the principal author of Laminins promote postsynaptic
maturation by an autocrine mechanism at the neuromuscular junction, the
cover article of the September 15, 2008 Journal
of Cell Biology.
ŇMany neurological disorders underlying intellectual and developmental disabilities are characterized by deficiencies in neural circuitries within the brain. This report by Dr. Nishimune makes seminal contributions to our understanding of how connections between neurons are established, refined and maintainedÓ Smith said in a recent statement.
Nishimune is a KIDDRC Theme 3 investigator.
Research Design and Analysis Unit March 26 Workshop
Save the date of March
26th for the next RDA workshop. The topic is
Group-Randomized Trials. Group-randomized trials are comparative studies in
which (1) the units of assignment are identifiable groups and (2) the units of
observation are members of those groups. In this context, an identifiable
group refers quite broadly to any group that is not constituted at random, so
that there is some physical, geographic, social, or other connection among its
members. Examples include studies that involve randomization of schools,
worksites, clinics, or whole communities to study conditions and the collection
of data from students, workers, patients or residents.
Presenter: Dr. Murray is the Chair of the Division of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at The Ohio State University. Since 1978, he has evaluated intervention programs designed to improve the public health. He has conducted research on measurement methods, etiology, and on the evaluation of primary prevention programs. Since 1989, he has focused on the design and analysis of group-randomized trials.
Dr. Murray published the first textbook treatment of this material in 1998. He is currently involved in several group-randomized trials, collaborating with colleagues around the country on their design, implementation and evaluation. He also conducts research to develop and test methods for the analysis of data from group-randomized trials. Dr. Murray has published nearly 190 articles in peer-reviewed journals and helped acquire more than $100M in NIH research grants. He teaches courses on the design and analysis of group-randomized trials, on applied categorical data analysis, and on writing NIH grant applications. He was the first Chair of the Community Level Health Promotion study section at NIH.
The Group-Randomized trials workshop will be held in the Kansas room of the Kansas Union. More details and registration information will be forthcoming.