Sinoway named principal investigator, director of CTSI

Dr. Lawrence I. Sinoway.

Dr. Lawrence I. Sinoway, director of the Penn State Hershey Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI), has been named principal investigator/director of the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). In addition to his continuing leadership of HVI, he is leading the efforts for Penn State’s mid-October resubmission for the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). Dr. Urs Leuenberger, professor of medicine, and Susan McHale, director of the Penn State Social Science Research Institute, are co-principal investigators.

The National Institutes of Health has broadly defined translational research as leading to improving individuals’ health and well-being. The CTSA program is a major initiative to accelerate this process and challenges academic institutions to build relevant, effective research programs through education of future scientists, two-way community engagement and novel research programs. So far at Penn State, through partnership with the College of Medicine, Huck Institutes for the Life Sciences, the Social Science Research Institute and the Institute for Cyberscience, CTSI has funded 32 collaborative studies for nearly $1.6 million.

Nearly 100 Penn State faculty have been involved in the preparation of both the initial application in October 2008 and the current resubmission application. The CTSA will create academic homes for clinical and translational science at approximately sixty U.S. institutions.