Core Leader

Dr. James P. Shaffery is Core Leader of the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience Website Core. Dr. Shaffery completed his graduate studies with the Animal Behavior Research Group, in the Zoology Department at Oxford, England (1984). Part of his early graduate research on the biological function of sleep involved studies of sleep electrophysiology in free ranging birds. A post-doctoral NRSA award under Dr. Howard P. Roffwarg on the function of sleep in brain maturation in young kittens led to an NIH/NINDS-funded project  to determine the neural mechanisms that allow the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep to contribute to brain development and maturation. In addition to his responsibilities as Website Core Leader, Dr. Shaffery has served as Chairperson of the Psychiatry Computer Committee. He has served on this committee since 1999, having been appointed during the University-wide effort to ensure Y2K compliance. He has also served on several ad hoc computer committees, including the UMC Information Systems Strategic Planning Committee. Dr. Shaffery has extensive experience with computer programming languages and has been involved with systems administration on mainframes as well as personal computers and workstations.

Core Goals

The CPN is comprised of several laboratories, not all of which are located in close proximity to each other. In addition to maintaining the visibility of the CPN in the research community, the Website Core Facility provides a powerful database resource for CPN investigators and for collaborating laboratories outside of the center.

CPN investigators regularly collaborate with other psychiatric neuroscientists within the state of Mississippi, across the country, and around the world. The Website Core Facility provides not only a means for this diverse group of scientists to communicate effectively and exchange information, it also facilitates secure data storage and exchange, electronic conferencing, interactive document markup capabilities, as well as providing protected access to a number of continuously updated databases. The Website Core Facility accomplishes this by maintaining a secure, website-based, large-capacity data storage server with simple user interfaces for deposit and retrieval of information.

Core Equipment

The Website Core Facility provides these facilities and capabilities on its own Dell PowerEdge 2650 rack-optimized server that boasts a dual 1.8GHz CPU, 70GB of Raid-Five level data storage,  1 GB of RAM memory and is supported on an (UPS) Uninterruptible Power System. The PowerEdge 2650 is a capable dual Intel processor server, allowing for future upgrades of its load-handling abilities. As the CPN and its list of collaborators grows, so can the PowerEdge 2650 server. The PowerEdge 2650 is maintained in a server farm at the University of Mississippi Medical Center administered by Donny Broome and the UMC Department of Information Systems.