Mount Sinai ADRC (Sano): Research Education Component (REC) ? Research Summary The Research Education Component (REC) of the Alzheimer's Research Center (ARC) will provide critically needed training for junior faculty, senior postdoctoral fellows, and clinical research track residents and fellows, to conduct research on Alzheimer's disease-related disorders (ADRD). REC will support mentored research experiences for junior investigators during two vulnerable periods of their career development, early in their careers as they approach the end of residency or fellowship training, when they are too junior to obtain career development awards, or later when they have completed a career development award (e.g. K award), have a junior faculty position, but have yet to obtain RO1 or equivalent grant funding. Through the participation of distinguished senior faculty mentors in an intellectually and technologically rich academic environment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), REC will also provide a mechanism to support gifted and highly motivated junior investigators who are new to AD research. Complementing state-of-the-art research training with teams of multidisciplinary REC mentors, REC scholars will receive an individually tailored didactic curriculum and exposure to multiple career-building activities, including a work- in-progress seminar series, science communication course, translational neuroscience and AD seminar series, grant and publication writing workshops and course, an academic survival and leadership seminar series, optional advanced coursework in neuroscience, genetics/genomics, and quantitative analyses, and a variety of additional resources available at ISMMS. REC scholars, moreover, will take advantage of well- designed, accessible ARC cores which will assist in their training allowing timely completion of their research program milestones and assisting scholars to meet goals set in their individual development plans (IDPs). REC objectives include: (1) To support trainees to conduct research to test questions and mechanisms important to the health of ADRD patients; (2) To provide advanced training in approach and methodologies needed to conduct high quality, ethical, and multidisciplinary research on ADRD disorders; (3) To provide multidisciplinary mentorship, with at least two interdisciplinary mentors, and an individually tailored career development plan; (4) To provide multiple forums that will encourage development of trainee presentation skills. (5) To prepare and assist trainees to submit and obtain external grant funding that is appropriate for their career stage (e.g. K award for postdocs and clinical fellows, or R21/RO1 for junior faculty), to sustain long-term academic careers as independent investigators and future leaders in the basic, translational, and clinical research of ADRDs. REC leadership, mentoring teams, and of course REC scholars themselves, will work together to closely assess short-term trainee progress and outcomes, and long-term trainee career development, providing critical metrics to evaluate overall success and guide future improvement.
