A community of investigators seeks renewed support for a pre- and postdoctoral training program that addresses the role of microbes in health and disease at the University of Wisconsin. Microbiology is fundamentally important to human health due to the prevalence and consequences of infectious diseases. Its significance has been elevated by bioterrorism and discoveries of the unforseen roles for microbes in certain human maladies and in promoting normal human physiology and health. The proposed Microbes in Health and Disease training program will have its physical and intellectual home in a new Microbial Sciences Building where basic and clinical scientists interact and collaborate, providing a strong sense of place, cohesion and identity to the Training Program. Our predoctoral trainees are drawn from the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program (MDTP), a highly ranked graduate program. Our postdoctoral fellows are drawn from a strong pool of PhD and Infectious Disease MD fellows, the latter from a program with a long history of placing fellows into academic medicine.. A program-wide Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Response Group (MPHRG) and Symbiosis Group hold biweekly meetings together, host invited speakers and have a Website and listserver. Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Bacteriology, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics are core departments of MDTP, MPHRG, and Symbiosis activities, and offer required didactic, journal club and seminar courses to our trainees. Instruction is provided in host-microbe interactions, microbial pathogenesis, immunology and infectious disease, translational medicine, and the responsible conduct of research. Our 28 faculty trainers span 11 departments in 4 colleges and actively collaborate with each other in both research and teaching. All trainers are productive scientists with proven NIH or equivalent funding records and strong records of graduate training. Most are tenured (15 full, 6 associate professors) and promising junior faculty trainers will be mentored by senior training faculty. The training program faculty are dedicated to recruiting outstanding students and fellows, including focused efforts for minority candidates, and are committed to pre- and postdoctoral mentoring and didactic and research training. To support this committment, and the NIH-stated need to train scientists in the area of microbes in health and disease, a request is made for the support of 8 trainees annually: 5 predoctoral trainees, and 3 postdoctoral trainees, including PhD and MD fellows. Each trainee is mentored by a committee consisting of a thesis advisor or mentor and 4 other faculty, and all trainees are also co-mentored by virtue of joint trainer service on these committees. The program and its trainers are highly regarded in the scientific community, and the success of the training program in the past cycle is demonstrated by the collective 29 publications of the 14 trainees, and their progress into competitive postdoctoral positions or academic, industry or government research careers.
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