The JDRF Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes (JDRF nPOD) supports research about human type 1 diabetes (T1D). By working with organ donor organizations, nPOD recovers pancreata and other disease relevant tissues from organ donors with T1D and nondiabetic donors with islet autoantibodies, which are then distributed to investigators worldwide. Recognizing that investigators are operating with synergistic goals in many key research areas, and that many critical questions cannot be fully addressed by a single investigator, nPOD has begun establishing collaborative working groups. These groups are implementing a research model based on real-time data sharing and joint analyses of common samples, enabling multidisciplinary efforts to best address questions and accelerate the pace of discovery. The first group established is the nPOD-Virus group, which focuses on the key topic of a putative viral etiology. Despite many decades of investigations, the role of viruses in the disease pathogenesis remains unresolved. The nPOD-Virus group is an international collaboration, involving more than 20 investigators and open to others to join. Investigators bring diverse and complementary expertise and apply a multitude of approaches to investigate the role of viruses in the most complete and informative way possible. For example, approaches include state of the art proteomics, electron microscopy, RNA sequencing, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, in vitro amplification and more. Moreover, new reagents and controls are being generated and validated to provide the field with new tools. The nPOD-Virus group has formally begun activities, with JDRF support, in the fall of 2012. This talk will present the group’s organization and scope, as well as new data emerging from this collaboration. It is our belief that the coordinated study of multiple tissues from T1D patients truly represents a golden opportunity to advance the field in this critical area of diabetes research.