Barbara Tafuto, Ph.D.

Barbara Tafuto, Ph.D. is the Interim Program Director for the MS in Clinical Research Management Program and an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers School of Health Professions. She teaches advanced courses in Clinical Research Management and Heath Informatics including: Multiple Analysis for Clinical Trials (BPHE 5500), Clinical Trial Data Management (BINF 5075), Pharmacoinformatics (BPHE 7005), Scientific Writing for the Translation of Medicine (BPHE 7620), and Literature Reviews (BINF 7700).

Barbara is also an Element C module co-lead for the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS). In this role, Barbara (1) develops clinical and translational workforce development programs, (2) mentors interns, and (3) conducts research designed to understand the effects training and education has on the clinical and translational workforce. Barbara’s primary research activities include informatics solutions in clinical and translational science.

In 2013, Barbara played a pivotal role in the development of a framework for the design, description, and evaluation of research networking and related system functionality. Research networking systems help researchers highlight their work and identify experts and collaborators for potential projects. A few years later, this framework was adopted as a standard for the development of the Netherlands’ national research portal, National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System (NARCIS). In 2018, Barbara focused her research on an informatics approach to metrics and evaluation for NIH funded Clinical and Translational Science Awarded (CTSA) institutions. The objective of Barbara’s research was to assess the content, navigational structure, and interactivity of the 60+ CTSA consortium hub websites to better understand hub transparency and collaboration capabilities. In 2019, Barbara successfully defended her dissertation in this area: The identification and evaluation of CTSA Program hub website content standards for knowledge management of NCATS CTSA program goals and initiatives.

In recognition of Barbara’s collaborative team science approach to forming her dissertation committee, which incorporated experts from Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences, University of Buffalo, and Northwestern University, Barbara was presented with the 2019-2020 Rutgers SHP Service to School Award. In 2020, in furtherance of her dissertation, Barbara was awarded a NJ ACTS Pilot Grant to develop a website that connects all 60+ Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs. This interactive website, called “CTSA Search Solutions” expands on the theme of Barbara’s dissertation and creates a novel approach to searching, identifying, understanding, and evaluating CTSA funded institutions. This award led to abstract presentations at national conferences and a peer review publication.

Barbara is currently a Co-Investigator on the R33 NIH grant titled “Advanced Development and Utilization of Assembled Aging Trajectory Files from Multiple Datasets.” In this role, she is responsible for Aim 4, which involves sharing and disseminating data repository resources, data documentation, source code, methods, and datasets. This project leverages the resources of Rutgers’ Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, Aging Research’s Survey and Data Core, the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and the NJ ACTS CTSA Hub to identify multi-dimensional shared risk factors shaping aging trajectories and design interventions to improve transitions in aging and functional independence.