A new Biostatistical Consulting Center (BCC) is proposed at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), Lahore, Pakistan. This BCC will be established with the help of Jackson State University (JSU) Biostatical Support Unit (BSU), an NIH funded unit, which provides research support and biostatistics consulting to faculty, researchers and graduate students at JSU. This new BCC will provide critical research-infrastructure support to investigators and students in Pakistan in conducting high quality research through efficient experimental designs and valid data analysis. A well functioning, state of the art statistical computing lab is under construction at UVAS with 20 desktop computers, projectors, other necessary equipments and widely used statistical software packages, such as SAS/STAT, SPSS, MINITAB, etc. A project website has already been launched that will provide online courses, workshop schedule and other related information in real time. A series of onsite workshops, short courses and/or seminars will be conducted at UVAS to develop critical human resources in the areas of experimental designs and data analyses in Pakistan. Participants for such activities will be carefully selected from UVAS and other institutions locally and nationally through well advertised procedure, with special emphasis given to qualified women. Researchers and graduate students, who have already collected their research data, will be identified for further training in JSU-USA. Special emphasis will be placed on women participation through rigorous recruiting efforts.

Collectively these measures will produce sufficient numbers of “train the trainers” who in turn further train researchers and students in Biostatistics, on a self sustainable basis in Pakistan. These efforts will lay necessary foundations to create a thriving research environment in UVAS with BCC as the center of excellence. A well functioning BCC will attract qualified faculty and students to conduct high quality research and will be instrumental in attracting extramural funding and creating a critical interdisciplinary link to solve today’s complex problems.