Core A: Administration
Core A supports the scientific goals of the CARRS Center by overseeing the operational functions of each Center component, facilitating the Center’s internal and external communications, coordinating training and educational activities, and disseminating Center resources and findings to the broader scientific community.
The scientific, training and educational and outreach efforts spearheaded by Core A are supported by 1) a Scientific Coordinating Committee (SCC) comprising the project and core leads and co-investigators, 2) a University Advisory Board (UAB) consisting of departmental and university leaders in clinical and translational mental health research who can help promote the overall goals of the Center, 3) an External Advisory Board (EAB) consisting of 5-6 senior scientists with expertise in scientific content areas relevant to the Center as well as experience in administering research centers and overseeing training and education programs.
Scientific and administrative leadership of the Center is provided by the Center Director, Colleen McClung, PhD and Center Co-Director, Daniel Buysse, MD. Dr. McClung has responsibility for the overall scientific and fiscal management of the Center, for facilitating the interactions of basic and clinical research investigators engaged in collaborative projects, and for promoting the training and outreach efforts of the Center. Drs. McClung and Buysse is assisted in these activities by Center Administrator, Sharon Slovenec, MBA, and Research Project Coordinator, Sarah Aerni, MLS.
Core B: Phenotyping and Biobanking Core
The Center for Adolescent Rhythms, Reward, and Sleep (CARRS) Phenotyping and Biobanking Core (Core B) supports the research projects through the acquisition of research subjects with specific phenotypic characteristics required by the human and animal projects. Our central hypothesis is that late sleep timing, short sleep duration, and circadian misalignment adversely impact cortico-limbic function in adolescents, further enhancing reward sensitivity, impairing cognitive control, and increasing substance use risk. The coordinated and deliberate procedures for assuring analogous phenotypic characteristics in humans and animals provide the foundation for this translational scientific program. For human studies (Projects 1 and 2), Core B will conduct systematic recruitment and screening of adolescents ages 13 through 15 years old to provide participants systematically varied in sleep timing. For rodent studies, Core B will establish a breeding and phenotyping pipeline to provide the animals required for Projects 3, 4 and 5. Core B will also provide biobanking services, including the collection, management, and banking of specimens from adolescent humans and adolescent HS rats to measure molecular rhythm phenotypes and to provide a high-quality repository for future mechanistic studies. Core B contributes to this innovative translational research program by collaboratively developing and implementing plans for assuring analogous phenotypes for CARRS human adolescent and adolescent rodent model studies.
Core B is directed by Dr. Duncan Clark, an expert in human adolescent development. Co-Investigator Dr. Mary Torregrossa provides expertise in rodent circadian biology. In coordination with Cores A: Administration and Core C: Data Management and Statistics, Core B promotes scientific rigor and reproducibility by providing oversight of ethical conduct and data quality assurance.
Core C: Data Management and Statistics Core
The central hypothesis for the Center for Adolescent Rhythms, Reward, and Sleep (CARRS) is that adolescent development acts on underlying sleep and circadian traits to modify homeostatic sleep drive, circadian phase, and circadian alignment, which in turn impact cortico-limbic functions critical to substance use risk (e.g., reward and cognitive control). We further hypothesize that specific manipulations of sleep and circadian rhythms during adolescence will affect reward responsivity and cognitive control in either positive or negative directions. These manipulations will provide experimental support our model, and proof of concept for novel clinical interventions to reduce the risk of substance use and abuse. Core C: Data Management and Statistics will support the 5 projects in CARRS by managing data (e.g., developing protocols, forms, and databases and assuring data quality and security) and performing statistical analyses (e.g., preliminary, primary, secondary, and exploratory analyses). In this way, Core C will guarantee high-quality, transparent, and consistent standards for data management and statistical analyses across projects and will maximize rigor and reproducibility within CARRS. Core C will also develop and adapt analytic methods that take full advantage of the translational and high-dimensional data captured across the 5 projects within CARRS. Areas of focus will include: use of supervised learning (e.g., random forests) for prediction with high-dimensional data within humans and, separately, rodents; methods for integrating findings across projects and species (based on data from Projects 1-5), and quantitative “multi-omic” methods for integrating RNA-seq and mass spectrometry data. Finally, we will educate researchers within CARRS and in the research community on existing and cutting-edge statistical methods relevant for our research. Topics will include rigor and reproducibility, analysis of sleep and circadian data, analysis of RNA sequencing and proteomic data, and the innovative statistical methods developed and applied within Core C.
Dr. Meredith Wallace, PhD, a biostatistician and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Statistics, and Biostatistics, serves as Core Director. Dr. George Tseng, ScD, Professor in the Departments of Biostatistics, Human Genetics, and Computational & Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh assists as Core Co-Investigator.