A Word from the Director, Dr. Jorge Piedrahita

As you can see from the content of the newsletter we have been busy!! It’s exciting to see the CMI continue to move forward toward its goals of providing greater opportunities for faculty and students at NC State.

One new initiative we are very excited about is the expansion of the undergraduate research experience from one research program (TGG) to all of the CMI. The program, initiated by Dr. Trudy MacKay at the TGG, was so well received by faculty that the decision was made to institute it CMI-wide. We are confident this effort will not only help establish active interdisciplinary collaborations among CMI faculty, but also lead to unique opportunities in research for our undergraduate students. Results so far are encouraging with data generated by TGG undergraduate students being used for grant applications.

Another area that we are excited about is the active inclusion of the Associate members in the functioning of the CMI. Dr. Alix Berglund from Dr. Lauren Schnabel’s laboratory now sits in the CMI executive committee and helps us guide the CMI so that the Associate Members benefit from inclusion. Out of these efforts, the CMI will be sponsoring, in partnership with other units across campus, events targeted at the needs of the Associate Members every six-months. We have partnered with the Keck Center for Behavioral Biology for our first effort. We expect that closer integration of the Associate Members will increase interactivity between the different CMI laboratories. If your graduate students or post doctoral students are not yet CMI Associate Members, they are missing a great opportunity to network NC State wide and beyond. To nominate them, please contact Linda Costine (ldcostin@ncsu.edu)

For our external partnerships, we continue to work with UNC Chapel Hill in various initiatives including a joint RFA with NC TraCS that resulted in funding of three projects between CMI and UNC faculty. These efforts not only provide opportunities for CMI faculty to establish a new collaboration but also help us achieve our long term goal of being competitive for large funding sources such as center, training and program projects grants. Our goals are to start to submit these types of grants in the next 12-18 months.

In short, CMI is thriving thanks to you!! I look forward to the next six months and seeing what we, as a group, can achieve. And as always, any ideas/suggestions for what we can do better are welcomed!!