While most NIH and other federal grants fund research projects, the NIEHS Center Grants are funded to increase the amount and quality of Environmental Health Sciences research, recruiting new investigators to the Environmental Health Sciences field, educating young investigators, and developing facilities to improve the research at both the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital.  These Centers are designed to establish innovative programs of excellence in the field of environmental health sciences by providing scientific and programmatic support for promising investigators and areas of research. A Core Center Grant is an institutional award to support centralized scientific resources and facilities shared by investigators with existing research projects. By providing a Center structure and Core resources this support is intended to enhance the ability of scientists working the field of environmental health sciences to identify and capitalize on current and emerging opportunities that will lead to outstanding research advances to improve our understanding of the relationship between environmental exposures and both human biology and human disease. These Centers provide the framework to support and maintain a high level of productivity of research grants at the institution and activities to develop new research which builds on current strengths but promotes translation to on clinical and public health applications. An EHS Core Center Grant helps to integrate and promote research in existing projects and provides an administrative framework within one or several central themes.

The focus of our center is the interaction between genetics and the environment.  Why do people, when exposed to the same dose of an environmental toxin, have different levels of disease?  Our mission is to promote integrative research between basic and applied scientists, epidemiologists, and clinicians to develop an understanding of the complex relationships between genetic predisposition factors and environmental exposures.  We strive to improve human health through clinical practice and public health initiatives that prevent illness and decrease mortality from diseases associated with environmental exposures. 

Our members work through focus groups, which are flexible collections of members from diverse disciplines who come together because of common disease-oriented research interests.  The Center for Environmental Genetics helps to support facilities, or service cores, that are needed for modern research, but often require equipment or expertise beyond a single research lab.  We also work to support the next generation of environmental health scientists through our Career Development Program. 

An important aspect of the Center for Environmental Genetics is the Pilot Project Program.  Every year the Center supports research projects that are centered on the gene-environment interaction.  This seed money supports new initiatives in basic research, attracts investigators to research in Environmental Health Sciences, and enables our Center members to use the Facilities and Services Cores that would otherwise be unavailable to them. 

Members of the CEG can use Center resources for manuscript production, grant applications, study design, IACUC, Biosafety, IRB, and radiation safety protocol submissions.  Contact the Center office for more information.

University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center investigators who wish to learn more about the Center for Environmental Genetics can contact our office for information about CEG membership, collaborations, facilities, and Environmental Health Sciences research supported by this Center.  Our member directory is available.