The UAB Predoctoral Neuroscience Training Program will fill the need for a singular coordinated and broad-based predoctoral training program for the entire campus, provide a regime for appropriate monitoring of student progress throughout their graduate career and serve as a basis for a standardized and outstanding graduate curriculum with flexibility for various tracks which span departmental boundaries. Each student will achieve a broad research background through active participation in formal courses, informal seminars and journal clubs, and through hands- on research opportunities. The curriculum emphasizes the multi- disciplinary and quantitative aspects of modern Neuroscience, a diversity of laboratory research training experiences and the development of skills in critical reading, writing, speaking and teaching. The first year, multi-disciplinary core curriculum will provide students with the breadth of knowledge of necessary fos successful scholarship in Neuroscience. Courses taken the first year will provide the student with background in molecular and cellular neuroscience, biochemistry, integrative neuroscience, cell biology, and developmental neuroscience. These established courses have been offered for at least the last five years. Students also carry out research preceptorships in at least three independent laboratories prior to identifying a permanent mentor. In the first year, there will be a hands-on intensive laboratory-based course in the fundamentals of molecular biology techniques and cellular neurophysiology. In the second year, students will begin pre-dissertation lab research with their permanent mentor and take electives meeting the student's specific needs and interests. Each student will be required in their second year to participate in the Medical Neuroscience course in order to expand their understanding of the disease relatedness of basic neuroscience principles. In addition, the career in traditional academic institutions, the program's graduates will be prepared to become research team members and group leaders in some of the expanding number of biotechnology companies and established pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, they will be positioned for entrepreneurial initiatives to foster intellectual property development and cooperative university- biotechnology efforts in brain-related drug design and development.
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