A newly launched website, CoresRI.org, connects scientists to hundreds of research resources across Rhode Island.
The website serves as a portal to core research facilities and services in academic and medical institutions all over the state, said Pamela Swiatek, director of research operations in the Division of Biology and Medicine.
These “cores” are laboratory services or large equipment that researchers need, but are often too expensive or labor-intensive for individual labs to manage.
A researcher searching for access to a piece of laboratory equipment, such as “a genome sequencer or an nMRI instrument,” can visit the website and “find all the information about the instrument they are looking for, as well as contact information for it,” said Jaime Combariza, executive director at the Center for Computing and Visualization.
Researchers simply have to pay a fee to use the cores. These funds are then allocated to the personnel working at the participating laboratory facilities and are also used to upgrade and replace the cores. Researchers from outside of Rhode Island pay higher fees, said Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Kevin Bath.
Institutions have been making investment decisions on their own for decades without consulting each other. But the partnerships that have formed as a result of CoresRI.org will allow for a more economic and efficient approach to scientific research, said Peter Snyder, senior vice president and chief research officer for the Lifespan health system and professor of neurology in the Alpert Medical School.
“We’re at a point in time with research funding being what it is at the national level that we have to be very careful about what we spend money on,” Snyder said.
To stay competitive, institutions still need to support their researchers internally, but “the silver lining in the current fiscal climate for research is that it’s forcing its institutions like ours to work a little bit more closely together,” he added.
Bath mentioned that such a system has been needed for a while. “The website makes everything much more clear and accessible,” he said. “We can now generate data based on our collaborations.”
According to the website, CoresRI.org consists of 12 partner institutions: Brown, Lifespan, Care New England, the University of Rhode Island, the Providence VA Medical Center, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence College, Bryant University, Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, Salve Regina University and Roger Williams University.
The website also works closely with the Center for Computing and Visualization, which provides the “computational power to analyze the data” collected from the cores, Combariza said.
“We have the applications, we have some expertise on that, and then we have the complete power to do the analysis,” he said.
Though similar resource-sharing programs exist in Illinois and Michigan, CoresRI.org is the most integrated system of its kind, Bath said.
Snyder said one would be “hard-pressed” to find another example of such extensive state-wide collaboration between institutions.
Undergraduates are also allowed to make use of CoresRI.org if sponsored by a faculty member, and some of the cores at Brown are designed particularly with teaching in mind, Snyder added.
Currently, the main focus of CoresRI.org is to keep the website up-to-date, Swiatek told the Herald.
Future plans include making the site easier to navigate in terms of scheduling and pricing, Snyder said, adding that a calendar of equipment and lab service availability as well as price listings for various cores are among upcoming upgrades.
Snyder said he hopes the favorable rates offered by CoresRI.org will attract new biotechnology companies and drive economic development in Rhode Island.
“This eventually should be a full public-private partnership, and I would love to see us grow the Knowledge District close to Brown and the hospital by bringing in biotech companies to use our cores,” he said.
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