We seek five more years of support for the popular Biotechnology Training Program (BTP) at UVA In the first 9 years of funding we built the BTP into a highly interactive community of PhD trainees drawn selectively from an annual Spring competition open to PhD students from all science and engineering departments university-wide. BTP students in training (17) or graduated (23) entered with an average undergraduate GPA of 3.53, currently include 4 minorities, and are hosted by 6 different departments. Trainees have received multiple awards, have published 47 first author articles in journals with impact factors as high as 19, experienced 32 different externships from 21 different companies, and after graduation are now employed in industry (11), academia (7;including 3 Ass't Professors) or government (3). Two are completing med school. Trainees have taken direct responsibility for programmatic features of the BTP including: editorship ofthe BTP newsletter, organization of BTP Minority Day, organization of BTP seminars, social activities, new student dinner, and BTP Symposia. Mentoring our trainees is a highly engaged, collaborative and well-funded faculty of 50 individuals from 13 departments, 3 of which are ranked in the top 10 in NIH funding;another #15 by USN&WR. Institutional support has been essential for our success, particularly the important role of the Graduate Programs Office and more recently the Molec. Cell and Develop. Biology Office in day-to-day administration of the Program. Also important has been the enthusiastic joint organization of externships by Engineering Associate Dean and Health Science Translational Offices. We view the BTP's mission as threefold: (i) most importantly to train our students to do the best science possible, (ii) to provide a meaningful experience in industrial science via our externship program, and (iii) to promote scientific synergy among BTP students of different disciplines through regular BTP Journal Clubs/Data Sessions, Seminars and Symposia. We argue in the following competitive renewal that success in each of these areas has been achieved, thereby helping to develop a new generation of young scientists who approach new scientific challenges with analytical minds and an extensive array of
We are developing a new generation of young scientists who approach new scientific challenges with analytical minds and an extensive array of modern technologies. The competitiveness of the US in the new global economy is arguably dependent on this kind of training.
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