ADMINISTRATIVE AND BIOSTATISTICS CORE

Administrative and biostatistical activities ofthe Program Project will take place in the Administrative Core. Drs. Isales and Hamrick will be responsible for the scientific oversight of the PPG, the direction of research emphasis and the fiscal administration. Dr. Isales will chair the Executive and Scientific Committee meetings and be responsible for preparing all progress reports for these two committees and for the NIA. Dr. Isales will consult with appropriate committee members and Project and Core Leaders in order to effectively resolve all personnel and fiscal issues that may arise. Dr. Isales will be the liaison to the NIA and will ensure that annual non-competing renewal reports and quarterly reports on participant accrual are reported promptly and accurately to the NIA. He will also oversee compliance with regard to MCG's Institutional Review Board's policies, including the requirement that all Project and Core investigators and staff maintain certification in MCG's Research Ethics Training Program. The main purpose of the Biostatistics component is to bring together the information from different sources into an integrated database, and to coordinate the statistical analyses with the focus being on the main goals of the PPG.The Biostatistics faculty will help the investigators ofthe projects to choose appropriate experimental designs and analytical techniques tailored to address specific hypotheses, especially, focusing on justification of the data analysis method to be used for each type of data generated. The Biostatistics component will serve as the focus for data compilation, quality control, data analysis and interpretation support for the PPG, incuding: 1. Design and apply analytical methods to be used in the quantitative studies associated with various projects in the PPG; 2. Provide ongoing statistical consultation to research projects, focusing on issues such as experimental design, sample size, aptness and validity of models to be used, power considerations, interpretation of results and preparation of manuscripts for presentations and publications; and 3. Maintain a dataflow system that insures accuracy, security, validation and archiving of all data collected for different projects ofthe PPG.