The overall goal of this proposed KL2 Program is to facilitate the recruitment, training, mentoring and retention of clinical and translational researchers from a broad range of health professions and diverse backgrounds. The program is designed to address some of the unmet needs and challenges for strengthening the clinical investigator pipeline that were outlined by the NIH Physician-Scientist Workforce working group. Its curricular activities were informed by a survey of the needs of young scientists across the Mount Sinai Health System. The proposed program: 1) takes a comprehensive approach to targeting and selecting KL2 candidates with special emphasis on underrepresented minorities and partnership with department chairs to help ensure retention; 2) provides multidisciplinary mentorship and individual coaching to identify strengths and weaknesses of scholars to inform individual development plans; 3) expands the training experiences outside of the Mount Sinai campus, including industry, community organizations and other CTSA hubs; 4) formalizes the training of research mentors at Mount Sinai and undertakes a concerted effort to expand the ranks of underrepresented minority mentor-role models; 5) emphasizes team sciences through courses that involve team-based technology product development and seminars on team building with management specialists; 6) facilitates transition to individual investigator status through grant writing workshops; and 7) includes the infrastructure for long-term tracking of our trainees to assess the outcomes of our training innovations and our contribution to the research workforce. The proposed KL2 program builds on the rich educational infrastructure and expertise of Mount Sinai and its new educational partner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which provides, among other things, educational and research collaboration opportunities in engineering and computer science. The proposed program also enriches the experience of scholars through its integration with other components of this CTSA, including Research Expertise and Methods, Research Implementation and Participation and Translational Science Base. Mount Sinai is committed to evolving our already successful KL2 program to optimize the training of translational researchers and believe that we have an important role to play in providing the laboratory for the implementation and assessment of research training innovations that have the potential to more generally shape the future of scientific training and investigation.
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