"What makes this grant so important is that it brings national recognition to LSU and allows us to expand our research program in infectious disease as it relates to human health and comparative medicine," said Thomas Klei, associate dean for research and advanced studies at the School of Veterinary Medicine. "This is the largest grant the school has ever received, and it's the only grant like this currently at LSU."

The grant is from the National Center for Research Resources, a division of the National Institutes of Health, and it is part of the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, or COBRE, program. COBRE aims to "build research infrastructure to enhance an institution's research capacity and competitiveness for NIH grants." The grant will last for five years and it can be competitively renewed for five or more years.

"This center constitutes a strategic alliance between the School of Veterinary Medicine, the LSU College of Basic Sciences, and the Tulane National Primate Research Center," said Konstantin G. Kousoulas, who will be the administrator of the COBRE program at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine.

The COBRE grant provides funding and research capabilities that will give assistant and associate professors the opportunity to establish research programs that will effectively compete for independent funding by NIH. Once a faculty member receives his or her own NIH funding for a particular research program, he or she will be rotated out of COBRE and replaced by other eligible faculty.

At present, a total of five assistant professors have research projects in the grant, representing the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine; the Department of Biological Sciences, College of Basic Sciences; and the Department of Microbiolo
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Contact: Rob Anderson
rander8@lsu.edu
225-578-3871
Louisiana State University
3-Aug-2004