We are pleased to announce that Grace McComsey, MD, has been named the new medical director of the William T. Dahms, MD, Clinical Research Unit (DCRU) at University Hospitals Case Medical Center effective March 1, 2016.

Dr. McComsey is responsible for all administration of the DCRU as it continues its mission to provide a specialized resource for multidisciplinary human research. The DCRU has a long and successful history as one of the first four General Clinical Research Centers (GCRC) in the U.S. and has been funded for 53 consecutive years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), either as a GCRC or through the CTSA program since 2007. The DCRU is a critical component of the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative (CTSC) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and is charged with providing infrastructure to support clinical and translational science research.

In her new role, Dr. McComsey and her team will continue to strengthen the DCRU's research infrastructure by streamlining processes for implementation of new protocols, quality management of studies, and by providing guidance to investigators on study logistics, budget and research participant safety. She will also lead the DCRU team to create the strategic plan for the future of the unit in response to the needs of physician scientists and the changing funding streams.

Dr. McComsey has trained and is board certified in adult and pediatric infectious diseases. Currently, she is a professor of pediatrics and medicine, as well as the division chief and the director of pediatric infectious diseases and rheumatology services at UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, where she holds the John Kennell Endowed Chair for Excellence in Pediatrics.

During her long and productive research career, Dr. McComsey has successfully conducted numerous single-site and multi-centered clinical trials investigating the pathogenesis of metabolic and cardiovascular complications of HIV infection and its treatment, with specific focus on the role played by immune activation and mitochondrial toxicities. She has received multiple NIH grants to study strategies to prevent or treat these complications. This research portfolio led to the creation of the HIV Metabolic Program at the School of Medicine. She has been an active participant in many local and national committees including the International AIDS Society-USA, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, and the CTSA National Pediatrics Oversight Committee, as well as an expert reviewer for NIH with a focus on metabolic complications of HIV.

Dr. McComsey succeeds Jackson T. Wright Jr, MD, PhD, as medical director of the DCRU, a position he held for 14 years. Dr. Wright is a professor emeritus of medicine and director of the Clinical Hypertension Program at UH Case Medical Center. His term at the DCRU was marked by successful completion of many important studies, and he is among the most influential researchers in hypertension in the country. In 2015, he received the American Heart Association's Clinical Research Prize for outstanding achievement in clinical cardiovascular science.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. McComsey as she embarks on this new endeavor, and in thanking Dr. Wright for his years of service to the DCRU.

• Formulation of Clinical Research Questions
• Literature Critique
• Study Design
• Analytic Methods
• Research Ethics 

The Center for Clinical Investigation at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is accepting applications for the New PhD in Clinical Translational Science program. The program will train and graduate clinical-translational scientists to meet the need for a transformed clinical and translational enterprise. Students in the program will be rigorously trained in the theory and practice of clinical translational science in order to make significant clinical discoveries and to move these discoveries across the translational continuum.

Please, see the New PhD program flyer for further details and the Clinical Research Scholars Program website for application information.

Petra Kaufmann, MD, MSc, is Director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR) and Division of Clinical Innovation (DCI), National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Spring 2016.

I have a track record in leading rare diseases programs, both in academia and government, where my work has included initiating NeuroNEXT, a network for neurological trials, and led to the creation of data standards for neurological disorders, most of them rare. As a medical student, I saw my first patient with muscular dystrophy. The lack of available treatments prompted me to seek training with experts in Europe and the U.S. on how to take care of patients with rare neuromuscular diseases, and also led to my work on myopathies and mitochondrial disorders, all rare diseases, as part of my pre- and postdoctoral research work. Following my clinical training in neurology at Columbia University, I worked on natural history studies, biomarker development and clinical trials in Lou Gehrig's disease, muscular dystrophies, spinal muscular atrophy and mitochondrial disorders with funding from the NIH, MDA, SMA Foundation and others. Clinically, I have worked in the adult and pediatric neuromuscular clinics at Columbia University, and I currently volunteer as an attending physician in the MDA Clinic at Children's National Medical Center. I also have served on scientific advisory panels for numerous rare diseases organizations including the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation, Cure Congenital Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, Telethon organization in Italy, European Mitochondrial Disease Network, and Treat NMD Advisory Committee for Therapeutics. In addition, I am a member of the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium Interdisciplinary Committee, and the American Academy of Neurology Science Committee.

The rest of the Q&A can be found here.