Our mission for the Research Career Development Core (RCDC) of the Arkansas OIAC is to develop junior investigators to become the next generation of leaders in geriatric/gerontologic research.
We aim to accomplish this mission by creating a training program for clinician scientists and talented young investigators who are interested in efforts to better understand cardiac and skeletal muscle dysfunction in aging and disease. This training program will provide selected trainees with partial salary support, travel, individually tailored course work, grant-writing instruction, career mentoring and consultation, didactic training, networking with established investigators, and regular evaluation of their research learning experience. The trainees will have access to infrastructural support?laboratories, office space, computers, interview and/or clinical research rooms, administrative support, statistical assistance, and grant writers?all available at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging (lOA) and elsewhere on the UAMS campus. Our goal is to offer a well integrated training and mentoring program within a research-intensive environment that nurtures and promotes talented junior faculty as they acquire and refine the skills that are necessary to assume research independence and future academic leadership, i.e., research study design, proposal development and execution, writing for scientific publications, professionalism and leadership training, and the to translate their research findings into effective and successful future interventions.
Specific aims of the RCDC are as follows:
Specific Aim 1. Recruit postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and/or midlevel investigators who are interested in aging research within the center theme, to become independent investigators and our future academic leaders in geriatrics and gerontology.
Specific Aim 2. Provide programmatic support to allow each trainee to develop research expertise and continue training and education in aging research.
Specific Aim 3. Provide mentoring to foster career development with regular evaluation of progress.
Specific Aim 4. Provide for each trainee the advice and guidance needed to tailor individual-specific educational and research experiences that are most appropriate for each person's background.
Specific Aim 5. Provide access to the complete array of equipment and facilities available in the lOA, the Arkansas OAIC, and other research facilities throughout our campus, including the NIH-funded CCTR.
impact of this project is to discover new ways to improve and prevent the typical agerelated progressive loss of strength and reserve of the heart and skeletal muscle in the elderiy, changes which are associated with significant morbidity and mortality as well as an enormous economic burden for the nation.
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