Dr. Robert Cook
Another new school year is starting, and several new things are in store for the SHARC this fall. In terms of research activity – congratulations to our faculty colleague Hwayoung Cho in the college of nursing, who received a K01 grant from the National Institute of Aging entitled,“Disparities in Risk of Dementia among People Living with HIV using Real-World Data”! In addition, our Florida Cohort wave IV has started enrollment in Jacksonville, under the supervision of our colleague Dr. Lori Bilello, in addition to our recruitment in Melbourne, and West Palm Beach. We are getting ready to add recruitment settings in Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale in September and at several rural clinics in county health departments later this fall.
In terms of training programs, our SHARC Professional Development Program will kick off August 27 (next week!) and we anticipate several new PhD students to be engaged in our PDP this fall. We will have a special PDP session for our post-docs this fall, focusing more on professional skills needed to help transition from post-doc to a real job (faculty or industry). I will be giving a “State of the SHARC” presentation in September as one of our research seminars to give an update on everything SHARC.
And for community engagement, we are pleased to have Dr. Jose Colon helping to lead our efforts this fall. SHARC will have a booth at the upcoming fall PRIDE day in Gainesville, so please volunteer as part of our team or stop by the booth. Finally, SHARC has some transitions. We have mixed emotions to announce that one of our T32 program directors, Dr. Angela Starkweather, will be leaving UF to become the dean of the college of nursing at Rutgers University. We will miss Dr. Starkweather and wish her the best as she transitions to this new position.