Letter from the Co-Directors: Spring 2026
Clinical Research Center Grand Re-Opening
The Clinical Research Center (CRC) moved back into its newly restored, renovated, and state-of-the-art facility in the University’s Health Sciences Campus in early January. This move marked the culmination of four years of hard work on the part of the CRC staff, our facilities teams, and Health Sciences Campus (formerly known as the Medical Center) and University leadership.
In late 2022, a flood made most of the CRC facility unusable for any work, let alone for the care and treatment of study subjects participating in clinical research. What followed was a monumental effort by our CRC staff and Research Services branch to shift operations to the Saunders Research Building across the street (home to the CTSI offices).
That temporary shift lasted four years, requiring a huge investment of resources and time for all involved. During the CRC’s time at the Saunders Research Building, the center supported 1,272 subjects, 5,578 visits, and 87 studies. In the newly restored space, the same types of activities will be supported, but with expanded capacity.
We have optimized the space, creating 30% more rooms in which study participants can be seen. We now have two overnight rooms, a pediatric room, a lactation room, and seven exam rooms. There are six modern infusion bays, a procedure room for muscle biopsies, a dedicated space for bone densitometry and other imaging, a specimen lab, and a neurology mobility lab. We also built a workroom with touchdown space for investigators and research coordinators, which was created in response to research team requests.
This infrastructure supports our study subjects, visitors, research teams, and the clinical nursing staff that does the work. We are so proud of Ann Miller, who leads that incredible team, including Debra Roskowski, Susan Haefner, Lisa Ryan, Jo-Ellen Eckel, and Dzevada Rizvanovic. They make clinical research happen, plain and simple.
We celebrated the grand re-opening of the CRC with University President Sarah Mangelsdorf, PhD; CEO and Dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry David Linehan, MD; and Vice Dean for Research and Vice President for Research Stephen Dewhurst, PhD, on March 31. We received great media coverage from News 10 and from 13 WHAM of the event, demonstrating that CTSI is raising the profile of the University as a regional health science resource.
Clinical Trials Powerhouse
The CRC is just one aspect of how our institute supports the clinical trials mission of University of Rochester Medicine.
The Office of Clinical Research directly facilities clinical trials through administrative support and infrastructure. Our research coordinator training program supplies training for staff. The Office of Regulatory Support helps investigators with FDA filings and compliance. Informatics and Analytics provides tools for identifying cohorts for clinical trial enrollment and helps manage data to support research teams. The Population Health branch helps our investigators ensure that clinical trials are community-engaged and community-focused.
The Research Education and Career Development programs train and educate the next generation of clinical trialists and researchers, including our new Translational Science Scholars Award program, which is welcoming its latest scholars under the new K12 award: Thomas Marini, MD, of the Department of Imaging Sciences, and Rachel Rodenbach, MD, of the Department of Medicine. This program is an evolution of our KL2 program, providing critical support to early career faculty.
Our recruitment and retention team has the critical job of helping investigators with trial enrollment. In fact, they just launched a new and improved Health Research and Clinical Trials website to better connect people in the community with actively enrolling studies.
As co-directors for CTSI, and as the leads of the strategic plan for clinical trials, we are working with experts at all levels to ensure the University is properly equipped to become a clinical trials powerhouse in the years ahead.
Milestones and Focus for 2026
To be prepared for those challenges, CTSI needs the right people with the right training and experience. We are proud to welcome Will Campbell, who joined the Informatics and Analytics team in January as a senior clinical research informatician. We are also welcoming Ruiqi Zhang, a data entry coordinator working with Dongmei Li, PhD.
We are proud of Zidian Xie, PhD, also of Informatics, who was just accepted into the RR-BIG summer training program. This workshop provides a unique opportunity to learn how to analyze neuroimaging genomics data from the ABCD database.
Later this year, we will hold an event to celebrate our grant renewal and 20 years of continuous NIH funding. We are inviting the entire University, URochester Medicine, and research community to join us, as CTSI simply could not be what it is without the people and the institutions that support it.
Until then, happy spring. Enjoy the (intermittently) nice Rochester weather!
Sincerely,
Co-Directors Karen Wilson, MD, MPH, and Martin Zand, MD, PhD
Jonathan Raab | 5/6/2026
