Intellectual and Developmental Disability Research Center (IDDRC)
The Intellectual and Developmental Disability Research Center (IDDRC) at Children's Hospital/University of Pennsylvania was established in 1990 with the support of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The rationale of the center was to establish a set of core laboratory services that would support research in the field of mental retardation and developmental disabilities; encourage new projects by sponsoring seminars, lectures and visiting professorships; enhance inter-disciplinary research; promote efforts to improve methods for the diagnosis and treatment of mental retardation and developmental disabilities; and bring investigators into the field through a New Program Development Program for junior faculty. The center is intended to augment existing NIH or NSF awards so that qualified investigators can expand their research horizons beyond the scope of their grants. At present, the center membership includes more than 70 projects from more than 55 investigators drawn from the School of Medicine, the School of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn. It is comprised of five research cores and an administrative core. The research cores include: Study Design and Analysis, Molecular Genetics, Analytic Neurochemistry and Spectroscopy, Cellular Neuroscience and Functional Neuroimaging.