# University of Rochester Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center

> **NIH NIH P50** · UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER · 2020 · $1,228,650

## Abstract

The University of Rochester (UR) has a long and extraordinarily rich history of providing first-rate clinical services
to persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), and in driving new discoveries through
research that create increased opportunity for individuals with IDD to live their lives to the fullest of their potential.
This proposed UR-IDDRC is founded upon a revolutionary philosophy of medicine, first introduced here at UR
Medical Center by Profs. George Engel and Jon Romano in 1977: The Biopsychosocial Model. This simple,
yet profound idea, that the person seeking treatment is not merely a product of their biology, but rather, is also
an amalgam of their psychology and socio-economic circumstances, places the whole person in all their
complexity at the center of medicine. If ever there was a population that deserves to be recognized and treated
in this holistic humanistic manner, it is those with an IDD. This UR-IDDRC places persons with IDD at the center
of our inclusive neurodiverse mission, and commits to providing excellence in our basic, translational and clinical
research, with a singular focus on providing tractable clinical solutions for these individuals. In the pages of this
program application, we describe the Center’s crucial scientific infrastructure, which supports four cutting-edge
Cores that elevate and accelerate the work of our 105 UR-IDDRC investigators, providing the very latest
available technologies and expertise with high efficiency and excellent cost-effectiveness. These Cores are:
Human Phenotyping & Recruitment (HPR); Translational Neuroimaging & Neurophysiology (TNN); Cell &
Molecular Imaging (CMI); and Animal Behavior and Neurophysiology (ABN). Through vigorous leadership and
in close consultation with our UR-IDDRC community and the five key advisory committees that provide counsel
to our Administrative Core (ADM), we articulate a set of five research foci that embrace key and established
research strengths at our institution while also seeking to expand our program into important areas of concern
to the larger IDD community. These are: (1) Rare and orphaned diseases of neurodevelopment; (2) Parental
stress and early life exposure as determinants of brain development; (3) Neuroinflammatory mechanisms in
pathological brain development; (4) Autism spectrum disorder; (5) Multisensory and sensorimotor integration.
Some 202 ongoing IDD projects, and 9 associated training grants, are supported by this infrastructure, and the
Center Leadership is committed to further growing this already thriving program by attracting and training new
young investigators and clinicians in IDD research. Major efforts to disseminate the work of the Center through
media outlets and culturally competent multilingual publications, oriented at our community, are in place.
Outreach to our IDD community and the public at large is a central concern of the UR-IDDRC. Leveraging the
enormous financial commitment of the Univer...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10085498
- **Project number:** 1P50HD103536-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** JOHN J FOXE
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,228,650
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10085498

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10085498, University of Rochester Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (1P50HD103536-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10085498. Licensed CC0.

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