MSCHE/ACOE Self Study

Since its last accreditation site-visit, the College has continued to invest in strengthening its research program by recruiting outstanding scientists who have been able to attract federal research funding (Strategic Plan Goal 2.3). Most recently, the College has recruited and established research laboratories for:  Benjamin Backus, PhD: Learning and visual perception  Robert McPeek, PhD: Neural mechanisms underlying attention and visually-guided action  Miduturu Srinivas, PhD: Gating and pharmacology of lens gap junction channels  David Troilo, Ph.D. : Visual development, accommodation, refractive error and myopia Each of these scientists is federally funded with more than one grant. As discussed in Section 5.3, a minimum of 20% of a graduate faculty member’s research effort during the academic year will be funded by the College, with additional time provided dependent upon success in obtaining grants (Strategic Plan Goals 1.9 and 2.1). Faculty will not be required to fund more than 30% of their base salary from their grants. Bridge funding is also available when there is a lapse in funding (please refer to Appendix C-12). As indicated in Goal 2.2 of its strategic plan, the College plans to establish a Center for Clinical Research. In addition to the internal grant mechanism described on page 50, the College has created ties to the Clinical and Translational Research program of SUNY REACH (a phased investment that seeks to build a collaborative biomedical research platform among the four SUNY academic health centers) and to the Office of Clinical Trials at Stony Brook to provide training and support. It is expected that at least one part-time person will be hired this academic year as a clinical trial coordinator and trained by the Office of Clinical Trials at Stony Brook to run a clinical data control center. The College is currently working on linking its IRB to those at the other Academic Medical Centers through the use of IRBnet. This will make the college a full member of a SUNY IRB consortium to facilitate clinical research and will help procure funding for both investigator initiated and industry funded clinical trials. The College has taken a leadership role in establishing the State University of New York Eye Institute (SEI) (Strategic Plan Goals 2.1 and 2.3). The mission of this institute is to integrate the complementary strengths of the four SUNY medical universities (Upstate, Brooklyn, Buffalo and Stony Brook) and SUNY Optometry into a single SUNY Eye Institute (SEI) in order to enhance research and training in clinical and basic visual sciences in New York State. Its primary goals are to: o Develop pre- and postdoctoral training programs in eye research across the five schools o Recruit basic and clinical investigators into eye research o Promote and foster collaborative research interactions among vision scientists across the schools

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