The goal of the Research Career Development Core (RCD Core) is to recruit, train, mentor, and develop future research leaders with skills in translational research and clinical investigation directed at exploring approaches to understand and modify multiple pathways of functional decline. Previous experience with our OAlC-supported Research Development Core has taught us that we must aggressively develop and recruit promising junior faculty to enter the field of aging research. Promising scientists will be recruited to develop and/or expand their investigative skills with an emphasis on translating basic research findings into clinical studies or, taking clinical research findings and posing new basic research questions. RCD Core awardees will take courses tailored to their specific career needs, receive mentoring from senior faculty members, and receive leadership training to prepare them for key positions in geriatrics and gerontology. Our mentoring plan is designed to motivate clinical investigators to explore basic research principles and basic scientists to interface with clinical researchers. The RCD Core will ensure that its awardees take advantage of other OAIC research cores and other experienced investigators at Duke University Medical Center. RCD Core awardees will participate in OAIC seminars and conferences where interdisciplinary investigators discuss their work. In these settings, ideas for translational collaborations are raised and discussed, resulting in new projects and studies. Close collaborative links with other programs and centers at Duke University will be available to RCD Core awardees, e.g., Duke Clinical Research Institute;Health Services Research Program, VAMC;Established Population for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly;RAND/Hartford Interdisciplinary Geriatric Health Care Center;the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, and the Duke University Medical Center Mentored Clinical Research Scholar Program (MSRSP). The RCD Core will help awardees develop interdisciplinary projects and use these programs, Center and Institutes to foster translational research studies. As has occurred over the past 14 years, with previous Pepper GRTC and OAIC support, the RCD Core will produce talented, well-trained investigators to help lead the next generation of scientists in the field of aging directed at positively reorienting trajectories of functional decline in older individuals.
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