In this Application, we seek continued support for the Infectious Disease Pathogenesis Research Training Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This Program, now in its 24th year of continuous funding, includes training mentors from the Schools of Medicine and Public Health, representing clinical, basic and epidemiological research. We propose a Program to train six postdoctoral fellows with a roughly equal number of MDs and PhDs. The goal of the program is to promote interest, expertise and career preparation necessary to understand the pathogenesis and control of infectious diseases. The crux of the Program is recruitment of talented trainees to specific laboratories or research programs. Some trainees will choose to receive formal training in public health (leading to the MPH degree) or molecular biology. All trainees will participate in the course, Responsible Conduct of Research. In this application we report on the training of 30 postdoctoral fellows (19 PhDs, 11 MDs) in the past 10 years, including 20 women and 3 African Americans. Six trainees have received MPH degrees in Epidemiology, and 2 current trainees are degree candidates. Most trainees have made excellent progress since leaving the Program, and have received extramural federal funding to support their research. In this renewal we have included 7 new faculty, representing the growth of the infectious disease community at UNC, and exciting new areas of research. We have expanded training to include research opportunities in an international setting (i.e. Malawi) and in some areas of civilian biodefense. In addition, the trainees will benefit from greatly expanded research space on campus resulting from ongoing construction and renovation. Finally, we continue to receive applications for training from excellent candidates that greatly exceed our resources. In summary, we believe the mentors, the trainees and the environment are well suited to support the goals of the application, and ongoing critical research issues in the pathogenesis and epidemiology of infectious diseases. ? ?
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