Program

The Meharry Medical College Specialized Research Program consists of an administrative core, an immunohistochemistry and microscopy core, and collaborative projects. The administrative core, which includes input from distinguished Scientific and Program Advisory Committees, will be responsible for the oversight of a number of faculty development activities including technical workshops, grants writing workshops, a visiting scientist and seminar program, weekly journal clubs and works-in-progress meetings (by the overall neuroscience community at MMC),  and an annual regional neuroscience symposium.  Each collaborative project involves a Meharry investigator and one or more senior scientists from Vanderbilt University’s Brain Research Institute.  The expectations for success set by the SNRP program will have a direct and positive impact on neuroscience research and training at MMC and will positively reinforce the existing Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance initiatives in both research and research training in neuroscience.

The scientific goals of the program are as follows:

• To develop the research programs of SNRP Investigators via mentoring and collaboration with other colleagues at MMC and with Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in a way that fosters the launching of the independent careers of these investigators, as measured by successful acquisition of peer-reviewed funding;
• To create and sustain an intense intellectual environment in the neurosciences, such that ongoing collaborations with faculty members at MMC or at VUMC are fostered by SNRP-funded investigators, and by the neuroscience intensive faculty overall, providing an enriched milieu for the conduct of research and for the training of graduate and postdoctoral trainees; and
• To link laboratory findings with clinical needs, and vice versa, to foster bench-to-bedside research.