About Us

The National Center for Research Resources at the NIH awarded a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant to the Center for Translational Neuroscience. This $7.5 million award is aimed at mentoring clinician scientists, in collaboration with basic scientists, to help them reach nationally competitive levels in NIH grant support. The COBRE programs at the CTN have oversight from an External Advisory Committee made up of established scientists from across the country, an Internal Advisory Committee made up of department chairs, and includes Administrative and Experimental Core Facilities, and a Career Development Program. A number of established and well-funded investigators have agreed to serve as Mentors for young clinician investigators at the CTN.

Ongoing COBRE research programs at the CTN include 1) motion sickness and tinnitus (John Dornhoffer, MD; Mentor, Mark Mennemeier, PhD), 2) Nantenine analogues as MDMA antagonists and PET ligands (Bill Fantegrossi, PhD; Mentor, Michael Borrelli, PhD), 3) physiological disturbances associated with neonatal intraventricular hemorrhage (Jeff Kaiser, MD; Mentor, Abdallah Hayar, PhD), 4) spinal cord injury (Nancy B. Reese, PT, PhD; Charlotte Yates, PT, PhD; Kevin Garrison, PT, PhD; Mentors, T. Glenn Pait, MD; Edgar Garcia-Rill, PhD), and 5) developmental regulation (Melanie MacNicol, PhD; Mentor, Gwen Childs, PhD). In addition, we have recruited three established scientists, Mark Mennemeier, PhD, a NIH-funded authority on neglect following stroke. He and CTN investigators are developing a novel treatment that eliminates neglect in certain patients; Elie Al-Chaer, PhD, an authority on Irritable Bowel Syndrome; and Abdallah Hayar, PhD, an expert in olfaction and electrical coupling. We have also recuited two young investigators, Amanda Charlesworth, PhD, a molecular biologist, and Bill Fantegrossi, PhD, a behavioral pharmacologist working on drug abuse. Current new funding at the CTN is over $13 million, and we have generated over 130 articles and chapters in the first four years of operation.