Shared Resource Management

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

SUMMARY: SHARED RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (SRM) With responsibility for overseeing all cancer-related research and clinical activities at Dartmouth Health, Dartmouth College, and the Geisel School of Medicine, DCC provides administrative and organizational support for shared resource (SR) facilities tailored to the needs of cancer researchers and accessible to all members of the Dartmouth community. This proposal is for six CCSG-supported SRs that provide DCC investigators and others access to cost-effective, cutting-edge instrumentation and expertise to drive new discoveries supporting a vibrant cancer research portfolio and current strategic priorities. The SRs have impacted significantly cancer research at DCC, with over 481 peer-reviewed DCC Member publications citing these services since 2019. The proposed SRs include Genomics and Molecular Biology (GMB), Immune Monitoring and Flow Cytometry (IMFC), Irradiation, Imaging, Microscopy, and Animal Care Models (I2M-ACM), Trace Element Analysis (TEA), Bioinformatics and Biomedical Informatics (BBI), and Pathology (PSR). By coordinating SR activities across the Lebanon and Hanover campuses and across organizations, DCC leverages economies of scale and streamlines operations to prevent unnecessary duplication of resources, while providing dedicated hubs of expertise in critical research areas. Apart from the PSR, which provides research access to clinical-grade services and is managed by Dartmouth Health, DCC is responsible for fiscal oversight of all SRs, setting service rates to achieve break- even cost recovery, and reconciling end-of-year finances. Consolidating SRs within DCC provides a greater return on investment by serving a more extensive user base and more effectively using personnel time and instrument availability. This feature of DCC SRs has led to high success rates for NIH S10 shared instrumentation applications, with four such awards in the current funding period and 7 since 2016. With dedicated DCC funds, this mechanism supports new equipment purchases that broadly impact the DCC and Dartmouth research communities and ensures that SR services remain state-of-the-art. The SRs also serve as hubs for cross- program collaboration between DCC researchers and across the SRs themselves. The SR Directors are members of DCC research programs, serving as close collaborators on research projects and providing the insight needed to implement services that directly address the needs of DCC investigators. SR Directors meet bimonthly to address operational issues, identify areas of synergy, and enable cross-core workflows that support increasingly complex projects. DCC also supports the infrastructure required for successful SR operation. This capability includes the RaDar platform, which serves as a portal for users to request SR services and interfaces with institutional financial systems to facilitate the billing of internal and external clients. The SRs also play an essential role in educating the research community, training users on instrumentation, hosting vendors for technology-focused seminars, and providing classroom-based learning opportunities and hands-on workshops.