The CMTV utilizes a multifaceted series of activities to promote interactions among the junior faculty members, the senior mentors, and members of the advisory committees to achieve the stated goals aims of the Center. These activities include:

Mentoring of Junior Faculty: The most important aspect of the development of the junior faculty members involves the close interaction with the senior mentors and other faculty members in the Center. This daily interaction involve research-related activities at several layers: offering advice on experiments, discussing experimental results, reviewing drafts of manuscripts and grant applications, critiquing research presentations, and interacting in the Fortnightly Virology Research Conferences, the weekly Virology Journal Club, the weekly Department seminar, and in teaching and training graduate students in virology. All senior mentors serve as the Mentoring Committee for each of the junior faculty PIs.

Quarterly Conference of Each Junior Faculty with the Senior Mentors Committee: Periodically, but at least quarterly, the Senior Mentor Committee meets with each junior faculty to discuss his/her progress and offer suggestions about all research-related activities. This Quarterly Conference will be the formal process to offer criticisms and suggestions about ongoing and planned research. The advice and input of the other members of the Internal Advisory Committee is invited at all times.

Fortnightly Virology Research Conference: The junior faculty and the senior mentors as well as all faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students working in virology meet fortnightly for presentations of ongoing research. The meeting format is that two researchers make informal presentations of their ongoing and planned experiments, followed by questions and discussion. Department faculty members working in areas of molecular bacteriology and immunology are invited to attend these research presentations.

Annual Virology Colloquium: All members of the Center meet off campus each spring for a two-day Virology Colloquium in which all Center members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students present a summary of their recent and planned research. The meeting is very informal and allows extensive time for discussion both during the sessions, at meals, and at a social mixer.

Weekly Virology Journal Club: The faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students within the CMTV meet every Friday at noon for a weekly Virology Journal Club, which is now in its 20th year in the Department. The format is informal, and each CMTV member (including faculty members) speaks in turn on current papers of his/her interests. There is always discussion, sometimes lively, and students and postdoctoral fellows are critiqued on their presentations. The Journal Club is another forum for Center members to interact and to keep abreast of the virology literature. Also, it is an opportunity for junior faculty and trainees to develop skills in teaching and presenting research to a group of their peers.

Departmental Seminar and Visiting Virologists: An additional activity that enhances the communication skills and research expertise of the junior faculty and our trainees is their participation in the weekly Department Seminar that is held every Wednesday at 4:00 PM. The speakers are a mixture of students, postdoctoral fellows, Outside Reviewers of student Research Proposals (every doctoral student has a leader in his field visit to review his/her NIH-style proposal on the doctoral research), and visiting scientists. A large number of virologists have visited, each of who meets with the faculty and the graduate students during the two-day visit. A partial list of visiting virologists can be found here.

External Advisory Committee (EAC): Three internationally recognized leaders in tumor and molecular virology serve as members of the Center's External Advisory Committee:

Members of the EAC will visit the LSUHSC COBRE CMTV periodically to interact with the junior faculty members, the COBRE Director and the Senior Mentors Committee, and the Internal Advisory Committee. The major purpose of the EAC is to be supportive of the COBRE Center and to help the Center Director, senior mentors, and the Internal Advisory Committee to achieve their goals of building excellence in research and developing the careers of the junior faculty who receive support.

Internal Advisory Committee (IAC): The members of the IAC have important roles at LSUHSC, and have significant research expertise in areas that overlap several of the research programs of the Center junior PIs.

Supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (8 P20 GM103433-10)