Abstract This application for renewal of the grant supporting the New Hampshire IDeA Network of Biological Research Excellence (NH-INBRE) proposes to 1) Improve the biomedical research capacity of the NH-INBRE Network and moreover the State of NH through collaborative partnership; 2) Increase hands-on, experiential research opportunities, and professional and research related training for undergraduate (and graduate) students, postdocs, faculty, and research core staff; 3) Expand our focus on Workforce Development to provide the necessary robust early entry of trainees to develop the pipeline for the specialized, diverse, research-related skill sets increasingly needed for biomedical team science; and 4) Leverage NH-INBRE programs in NH and regionally/nationally by collaboration with both other IDeA grants and non-IDeA funded programs. The components and organization of the Network are described as is the progress made during the first 9 years. The proposed Lead institution will continue to be the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, which will house the NH-INBRE Administrative Core. The University of New Hampshire at Durham will continue to be the Co-Lead institution. The proposed Partner institutions include 7 four-year primarily undergraduate institutions and the Community College System of New Hampshire. The themes of the NH-INBRE will be Microbial Pathogenesis, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Neurobiology and Behavior, and Human Health. NH-INBRE will continue to be directed by a team of accomplished faculty, all of whom direct active, federally-funded research laboratories themselves. This team constitutes the Administrative Core (AC) of NH-INBRE and will be led by Principal Investigator Dr. William R. Green. This team concept, as opposed to placing the entire administrative functions in the hands of only the Principal Investigator and Program Coordinator, has proven very effective in establishing NH-INBRE and initiating diverse programs. Different components of NH-INBRE (Cores and the Developmental Research Projects Program) will work collaboratively to accomplish the goals of NH-INBRE and to evaluate all NH-INBRE programs. A wide variety of metrics will continue to be utilized for ongoing evaluation and improvement of the NH-INBRE. The NH-INBRE plan is organized around the related ideas that original scientific research is a vital part of scientific training for college students, and expanding the participation of students and faculty at our Partner institutions in original scientific research on their campuses is essential for instilling a culture of biomedical research within New Hampshire’s institutions of higher education and the state overall.

Narrative The human resource of trained researchers is a crucial component of successful biomedical research that can improve health and healthcare. Currently many potentially productive researchers coming out of undergraduate training choose other careers related to science or leave science because they have not experienced original research. Similarly, at primarily undergraduate colleges the research done by the fully research-trained faculty is limited by inadequate resource investment. NH-INBRE's programs would continue to support the further development of these underutilized human research resources and increase the research training of the workforce of New Hampshire.