The goal of the Career Development Program is to prepare physicians and scientists for independent careers in translational research in sarcoma. It is our hope that the women and men funded through this process will spend their professional lifetimes conducting translational research specifically in this set of diseases and that they will become leaders in their fields of interest. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is ideally suited for this task, with substantial physical and faculty resources and more than a century of experience training physicians and scientists of the highest quality. Our institutional environment includes a K12 for translational science training and a K30 for the training of clinical investigators. In the Career Development Program, we plan to enhance the formal training programs that already exist at MSKCC. We will encourage more physicians to focus on translational research in sarcoma and will similarly strive to attract basic scientists to devote postdoctoral fellowship training to this quickly evolving field. We will also provide partial support for two new junior faculty investigators every 2 to 3 years who commit their careers to translational research in sarcoma. In our efforts to recruit these investigators, we will draw upon existing programs at MSKCC that recruit, train, and mentor postgraduate scientists and physician-scientists. We will budget at least $150,000 yearly for this program, including $50,000 from the SPORE award itself and at least $100,000 in funds pledged by MSKCC. To continually educate both trainees and SPORE staff, we will utilize regularly scheduled conferences, data presentations by members of the SPORE research projects and cores, and presentations by invited speakers. The Career Development Program will be directed by a Career Development Committee, chaired by Dr. David Spriggs and Dr. Robert Maki.
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