Driving Biomedical Projects (DBPs) are science drivers for the four NBCR TR&D cores. All drive multiple technologies and have characteristics to push resource technology into applications of biomedical relevance. Research problems and investigators for these DBPs have been selected to promote development of NBCR software tools and infrastructure.
What distinguishes DBPs from our Collaborative and Service Projects (CSPs) is that they require resource scientists to mature or further develop an emerging resource capability. The DBPs require greater involvement from the scientists as we are combining efforts, expertise, and technologies to produce a new capability. Many of these projects are clustered about an important biomedical or translational research initiative and so use one or more of the resource’s technologies.
Many core personnel are engaged in DBP projects as active collaborators, often more than one NBCR scientist per DBP as these projects span multiple TR&D cores. Others participate as supporting staff to ensure that the projects receive appropriate technological support.
Many investigators participating in DBPs, once they achieve their project objectives, initiate follow-up or spin-off investigations with NBCR. This reiterative build-up of critical mass among projects is an essential step in development of an active and scientifically strong user community for NBCR that more fully exploits the capabilities of resource technology, assists in technology dissemination, and promotes more widespread adoption of emerging advanced methods into future biomedical research projects.
If you have a project that you would like to propose as a DBP, please fill out our Collaborator Application Form.