Developmental Infrastructure Core

The Developmental Infrastructure Core has four components. Three are aimed at the entire set of MPRC faculty associates:

(1) Seed Grant Program

(2) Research Development Workshop

(3) Annual Seminar Series

(4) Interdisciplinary Work Groups

Seed Grant Program

The Seed Grant Program at Maryland has five goals for the development of faculty research: (1) to facilitate the development of strong individual research proposals, especially NIH and NSF applications, (2) to support junior faculty in proposal development, (3) to encourage faculty in allied fields or faculty who have not previously sought funding from NIH to develop grant proposals, (4) to encourage grant development that involves faculty from more than one discipline, and (5) to support high-risk/high-return projects or projects where time-sensitive funding is needed.

Research Development Workshop

MPRC has dedicated a large amount of financial resources and energy to helping our younger faculty develop research programs and compete successfully for external funding, especially at NICHD. We have targeted the R03 mechanism because most of our faculty had never applied to NIH for funding and many had projects well suited to this mechanism. Our method of aiding faculty is organized, systematic, and rigorous. The workshop meets every week and typically has four or five young scholars working on new projects.

Annual Seminar Series

To date, MPRC has run three separate seminar series. The seminar series in the population sciences meets bi-weekly and appeals to a wide range of population scientists. The MPRC seminar is organized by the DIC committee that meets before the each academic year to set the seminar invitations for the year. The tradition is to reserve several slots, especially in the Fall Semester, for new MPRC faculty associates. All members of MPRC are encouraged to suggest names for seminar speakers. Individual faculty members take responsibility for organizing campus visits in coordination with the Administrative Core. The seminar attracts faculty from across fields. The seminar atmosphere is critical but constructive and we work hard to establish rules that allow for civil inquiry. The seminar is typically attended by 55 faculty members and graduate students. The seminar exposes faculty to new ways of approaching problems, makes faculty aware of data that may be underused and encourages interdisciplinary exchange.

Interdisciplinary Work Groups

MPRC's work groups have similar objectives with respect to their focus areas – to attract and develop junior scholars in the area, to facilitate communication among the broader community of scholars both within the university and externally, and to stimulate research that contributes to population science and its methodological underpinnings. To these ends, the four groups have proposed specific activities that include training to introduce new scholars to the tools and techniques of research in the area; grant proposal workshops that will help new scholars refine their research ideas and obtain the support needed to carry out their research; seminar series and conferences that will bring together researchers with related interests from across multiple disciplines; and a variety of data development and dissemination projects.