CORE A – PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Core A. Administrative, Statistics and Bioinformatics Core Paul F. Lambert, Leader The Administrative/Statistics (Admin/Stats) core provides two essential elements: oversight of the program project grant and expertise in statistics and bioinformatics. Oversight occurs at multiple levels, intellectual, administrative and financial. Intellectual oversight is achieved through multiple levels of interactions by the PI with Project leaders and their lab members, and with Core leaders. An internal advisory board provides twice annual assessments of the program and advises Dr. Lambert of its findings. An external scientific board provides annual assessments of the program and advises Dr. Lambert of its findings. Ms. Mary Jo Markham, a long-time member of McArdle, assists Dr. Lambert with administrative oversight. She organizes multiple venues described in the core that facilitates faculty interaction, coordinates the training efforts of each lab, and helps the faculty adhere to all regulatory and reporting requirements associated with the grant. Mr. Randy Martinson assists Dr. Lambert with regard to overseeing the financial management of the grant. He has over 35 years’ experience in coordinating the management of this grant, ensuring that monies are allocated appropriately and used efficiently to support the 4 projects’ and 3 cores’ needs. Ms. Markham and Mr. Martinson report directly to Dr. Lambert. The statistics/ bioinformatics sections of this core are led by Drs. Michael Newton (continuing on from the current funding period to provide primarily biostatistical support) and Huy Dinh (a recent faculty hire with strong expertise in bioinformatics and extensive training in computational sciences). Dr. Dinh has already collaborated on two published P01 papers from two different projects (Projects 1 and 4) and is highly engaged in discussions with other project leaders. Together, Drs. Newton and Dinh provide expertise in the design and statistical analysis of animal/lab experiments and bioinformatics analyses of genome-wide data sets, respectively, to all projects. Emeritus Professor, Dr. Norman Drinkwater, will continue to update and advise all projects on use of MSTAT, a software program he wrote to help scientists in the biological sciences use statistical tests.