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 recruit, select, mentor and train 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. RCDC Scholars will take courses tailored to their specific career needs, receive mentoring from their senior faculty team, 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 this milieu ideas for collaborations are started and discussed, resulting in new projects and lines of inquiry. For each junior faculty member chosen as an RCDC Scholar the Duke Pepper OAlC's intended outcome is to prepare and support them to become independent investigators doing aging research. After two to three years of support, success for each RCDC Scholar will be measured by their ability to secure research career development support or independent investigator- Initiated extramural funding. RCD Core Project Leader, Kenneth Lyles, MD will work especially closely with Pilot /Exploratory Core Studies Core Project Leader, Kenneth Schmader, MD, to maximize the use of our Core's resources to help prepare our awardees so they have the requisite skills as well as pilot data to successfully complete for career-development awards, and when appropriate investigator-initiated funding. As occurred over the previous 19 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 clinical, translational or basic research that focuses on exploring multiple approaches to understanding and modifying multiple pathways of functional decline.
This Research Career Development Core in the Duke Pepper OAIC has the knowledge, skills, faculty, operations staff and resources necessary to recruit, select, mentor and train the next cadre of clinical, translational and basic investigators critically needed in this country who will be capable of conducting research to maintain or restore independence in older persons.
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