Optimizing Institutional Approaches to Enable Research

Challenges that face the academic research enterprise are numerous. These concerns include, but are not limited to: declines in extramural funding for investigatorinitiated research, an aging faculty workforce (the average age of securing a faculty's first R01 is over 42), insufficient funds to support faculty laboratories, and limited access to cuttingedge, next generation infrastructure and methods to support research. This manuscript describes an institutional approach to providing leading-edge core facilities and enhancing the effectiveness of their operations by implementing process improvements, managing the lifecycle of core facilities, and monitoring key core facilities' metrics. This approach has created a number of standardized, transparent processes to effectively manage central infrastructure that enables enterprise-wide research, including a process for capital equipment planning, a procedure to evaluate new cores, a method for reviewing and managing the lifecycle of existing cores (invest, maintain, or sun-down), an investment in the administration and operational efficiencies of the cores, and support for the development and implementation of new methodologies for our investigators. The execution of these processes has provided faculty with forward-looking technologies to facilitate innovative research and provide a competitive edge for extramural support.