Administrative Core

The Administrative Core (Dr. Rimsza) will provide the strategic leadership, organization, communication, and fiscal management of the grant. The Core will support the grant through the following Specific Aims/Goals: (1) To provide strategic leadership of the grant including the initiation, coordination, and successful submission of this P01 grant, ensuring rigor and reproducibility in experimental design and core activities, and evaluating on-going program announcements for additional funding for spin-off and developmental work. (2) To provide feedback on progress and direction of Projects and Cores via requiring semi-annual presentations from each Project and Core to evaluate their progress, discussing difficulties and planning new directions; convening the internal Steering Committee and External Advisory Board, and monitoring and suggesting adaptations in response to emerging scientific trends. (3) To coordinate communication by scheduling and running the monthly LLMPP Steering Committee calls (setting the agenda, recording and distributing minutes), maintaining membership list with contact information, organizing the semi-annual meetings (WebEx and face-to-face), and preparing the annual progress report for the NCI. Communication functions will also include overseeing preparation and submission of abstracts, posters, and manuscripts, including issues related to authorship. Finally, the core will oversee any intellectual property issues (several patents were previously filed on behalf of the LLMPP by the NCI); and (4) To oversee fiscal matters by working with PIs on the initial and 5-year budgets and budget justifications, overseeing preparation of the sub-contracts to the different sites, monitoring spending, approving invoices, and re-assigning funds as needed. Dr. Lisa Rimsza will be the Principal Investigator of the Administrative Core and grant overall, as well as a co-PI on Project 1 and co-investigator on Project 4. She has served as the LLMPP overall Principal Investigator for the last 7 years including submission and successful funding of the prior LLMPP grant and spin-off grants, and is now leading the current grant application after unanimous re-election as the continued overall Principal Investigator by the LLMPP members. In addition to her scientific credentials, she is highly experienced in all aspects of scientific grant management. The impact of this Core will be the smooth functioning of this already highly successful research consortium, making the best use of resources and talent, and ensuring cohesion to achieve the stated scientific and medical goals. She is supported by a strong infrastructure in the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration at the Mayo Clinic including pre-award and post-award specialists, accounting, and liaisons with the University of Iowa-Mayo Clinic Lymphoma SPORE grant’s Biospecimen shared resource.