This application is for the third competing renewal for the sole training grant supporting an inter-departmental graduate Program in Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB Program) at Baylor College of Medicine. The CMB Program was founded on a commitment to excellence in research, with strict guidelines for both student and faculty participation in the program. The program has 95 faculty members from seven basic science departments, as well as several clinical departments, including a cadre of newly recruited young faculty. Therefore, we provide our students with a wide spectrum of exciting research possibilities. During the fifteen years of funding, 130 students have entered the program, with 50 students currently enrolled. We have been very successful in attracting students of high caliber to the College, through active recruitment mechanisms, and as a consequence, entering class sizes in the past three years have been 9 to 12 students per year. ? ? We also continue to emphasize a rigorous graduate education program, which is combined with an intensive mentoring approach that is provided through all stages of CMB graduate education. Correspondingly, the research productivity of our students has been exceptional, as measured by both the number and quality of CMB student-authored publications. Students who have graduated from the Program, between 2000 and the present, have graduated with extremely strong publication records: these 19 students have published, on average, 5 papers as a result of their thesis research, including 2.5 first author papers, with an average impact factor of 8.7 per publication. An additional notable achievement during the last funding period has been our continued success in both recruiting, and retaining, under-represented minority students, with seven students currently enrolled in the program; furthermore, our currently enrolled under-represented minority CMB students include some of the top students in the College with regard to academic achievements. During our past training period, we had 10 pre-doctoral positions funded through this award. We are requesting a total of 12 funded positions in the current renewal, which should create an enrolled student body of ~60 students, an optimal size for scientific interactions and mentoring by Program faculty. ? ?
Showing the most recent 10 out of 37 publications
