On August 21, the School of Medicine will be welcoming David Driscoll, PhD, as Director of Research Development, and a key member of the UVA ResearchNET team led by the VPR Office and sponsored by the Strategic Investment Fund.
This is a new and important role. As Director of Research Development, Dr. Driscoll will support investigators by creating links among the research-intensive schools here at the University of Virginia, fostering collaboration within the School of Medicine and among the other schools, working to increase funded interdisciplinary projects, and lending support to more complex projects.
Dr. Driscoll will be examining untapped organizations and agencies for potential funding sources. He will be our advocate at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an entity from which the SOM receives a large portion of its research funding. He will work with his counterparts in the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to identify potential collaborations. This will be a bi-directional arrangement, in that Dr. Driscoll will both market our faculty to funding agencies and find new funding opportunities where faculty can apply. He will help tailor proposals to maximize their chance of success. I also see his efforts interlocking well with the Strategic Hiring Initiative (SHI), our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), and cross-disciplinary research efforts.
Dr. Driscoll comes to us from the University of Alaska where he was the Director and Associate Professor of Public Health at the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies. Previously, he was Associate Dean for Research at the University of Alaska’s College of Health and, before that, the Senior Public Health Scientist in the Health Communication Program at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Dr. Driscoll received a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in epidemiology from the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida and a Doctor of Medical Anthropology degree with a specialization in social marketing from the University of South Florida.
As the co-investigator on the IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) — a 5-year, NIH-funded project — he is looking to strengthen and expand the network for biomedical and health research and training toward translational perspectives.
When Dr. Driscoll arrives next month, please join me in giving him a warm welcome to the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Margaret A. Shupnik, PhD
Senior Associate Dean for Research
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