Coordinating Center

The Coordinating Center provides comprehensive administrative support for the PRECINCT Research Network, promoting effective communications, coordinating meetings, managing working groups, and distributing study proceedings among the network entities including the Coordinating Center (CC); the Steering Committee with representatives of the UO1 Clinical Research Centers (UO1); the NCI Project Officer and COP representatives; and an External Advisory Committee (EAC).

Successful multi-center research networks require collaborative efforts, precise planning and documentation of all procedures, regular communication among all participants, and uniform adherence to the research objectives and protocol(s). The CC cultivates an atmosphere of scientific collaboration/cooperation, establishes and promotes effective communication, and coordinates the design, development and conduct of all protocols within the PRECINCT network.

Data Management

A key objective of the CC is to promote consistent data collection and electronic storage methods across all trials in a way that is efficient but not burdensome to the conduct of the individual trials. To meet this objective, the CC, in collaboration with the UO1 site investigators, will identify data elements that will be or should be common to all trials. The CC will develop data management system to facilitate the entry, quality review and secure storage of these data elements for any site. Some sites wish to use locally created databases, and the CC collaborates with those sites to ensure consistent data quality standards. All data managed locally will ultimately be incorporated into the central database at an appropriate time to facilitate data sharing and analysis.

The CC also helps to facilitate critical research operations activities:

Data collection requirements, work flow and forms design
Data quality assurance and assessment
DMS design and construction
Training and support
Reporting and analysis
Data standardization
System security
Data coordination services

Biostatistical Support

The CC collaborates with U01 investigators on aspects of study design, both for local pilot studies and multicenter studies, including overall aspects of study design, sample size calculations, and development of statistical analysis plans.

Secondly, this collaboration involves supervision of a biostatistics staff member from the Biostatistics Analysis Center (BAC) for the analysis of studies that are to be conducted centrally. Furthermore, the CC can provide special expertise in missing data methods, causal inference, statistical genetics, functional data analysis, imaging studies, and others. The possibility of application of many of these biostatistical methods in veterinary medicine is innovative and can significantly contribute to the scientific rigor of these studies.

Members of the Coordinating Center


Qi Long, PhD	Nicola J. Mason, BVetMed, PhD	Fangyuan Zhang, PhD	Natalie Kuzla
Professor of Biostatistics	Professor of Medicine & Pathobiology	Senior Bioinformatician	Senior Project Manager
Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, & Informatics University of Pennsylvania	University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine	Institute for Biomedical Informatics University of Pennsylvania	Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Jim Dattilo Senior Data Analyst	E. Paul Wileyto Adjunct Associate Professor of Biostatistics	Biostatistician
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania	Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania	Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania