Connect with CARD to explore frontiers of Alzheimer’s and related dementias science

Dr. Andrew Singleton

Andrew SINGLETON,
Director,
Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (CARD)
.

While some of you may already know me as a long-time investigator in NIA’s intramural research program, I’m excited to further connect with the extramural research community in my new role as director of the Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (CARD). CARD is a new, collaborative NIA/NINDS-led initiative designed to reinforce and enhance research on Alzheimer’s and related dementias by further supporting basic, preclinical, and clinical research through an agile team science model. We are still in the early stages of constructing our physical workspace, but now is the time for interested extramural researchers to begin collaborating with us, as there are already exciting career development and other opportunities on the horizon.

What we do

CARD’s central mission is to initiate, stimulate, accelerate, and support Alzheimer’s and related dementias research, creatively addressing challenges in the field. We utilize a data-driven approach and foster engagement with researchers across government, academia, and industry.

We aim to work in partnership with researchers across scientific domains and disease boundaries. We have already established several intramural projects at NIH in pursuit of constructing an open source, open science, open data network for the greater Alzheimer’s and related dementias research community. Our scientific priorities currently fall in the domains of understanding biology and genetics; improving disease prediction and diagnosis; de-risking therapeutic targets; and precision medicine clinical trials.

We are new and evolving, and current CARD efforts include:

  • Creating readily available, disease-relevant cellular models.
  • Building datasets from a foundational repository of induced pluripotent stem cell lines to study the effects of gene mutations on cellular pathways.
  • Conducting DNA sequencing to cultivate a greater understanding of the genetic architecture of challenging regions of the genome.

Collaborate, get training, or join our team!

We welcome new connections with the extramural research community to further execute our mission and goals. These projects should be anchored in the main scientific themes outlined above, as well as our core structural priorities, including:

  • Diversity in research and researchers
  • Democratization of data
  • Transparency and reproducibility
  • Foundational resource generation
  • Bridging the translational divide

CARD has also partnered with the NIH’s Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to offer a unique, high-quality Master’s in Professional Studies in Data Science training program. This program is designed to help researchers grow skills applicable to the biomedical and health care fields and to support the next generation of data science and bioinformatics professionals at NIH. The fall 2021 class cycle has already begun, and information on registration for the spring 2022 semester will be announced soon. Later cohorts will be launched through 2023.

We’re thrilled to have this opportunity to contribute and engage with our extramural colleagues to help identify and address key barriers to progress. We’re looking to grow our team as well, so if you’d like to work with us, check out our current job openings! For more information on connecting with CARD, please contact us at caroline.pantazis@nih.gov or leave a comment below.

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