Career development This effort is lead by James Feramisco, PhD. As the director of the Digital Imaging core in the cancer center, he has interacted with most biomedical scientists and is therefore the most knowledgeable individual of all the opportunities available in biomedical research in general and cancer in particular. He was instrumental in the career development and training program established for Claude Sirlin, the first active trainee in ICMIC (See section 5a). The NIH-funded CREST program is a 1 or 2-year program that teaches postdocs and junior faculty how to conduct clinical research and effective grant writing. This program was invaluable in Dr. Sirlin's development. In fact, 3 of the CREST graduates in the past 2 years have won K awards by the completion of their training. We present Dr. Sirlin's program, in the detailed description later in this proposal as an example of what a training program curriculum would be like. Dr. Feramisco will help trainees select courses tailored to their interests and needs, identify laboratories where they can train, and assign them a mentor in addition to their laboratory leader to guide their career path. He will be aided by all ICMIC members in this important function. We will recruit from the large number of individuals in training at UCSD that include approximately 500 MD and 50 MD/PhD students, 500 postdoctoral fellows, 300 PhD students, 600 interns/resident and an expected enrollment of 240 Pharm.D. plus 60 PhD students and 30 pharmacy residents. Because we believe a more critical and important task in swelling the research ranks is to develop scientists from a promising pool of undergraduate students, we would like to attract undergraduates and excite them in medical science research to pursue postgraduate training. Of those that pursue graduate work, some will go on to become academic basic scientists and some will be inspired to pursue MD/PhD training and become clinician scientists. By starting from the undergraduate level, we will develop individuals with interest in science rather than any other lures and will create a pipeline of new investigators. We have developed collaborations with the UCSD Engineering and Bioengineering Departments and their leaders and this effort has been streamlined by combining our effort with the NanoTUMOR Center that brings to the interaction a large number of students from the physical sciences. In addition, Mattrey is also the P.I. of a recently awarded T32 to train radiology residents into clinical scientists. Isabel Newton, MD/PhD a co-investigator on Dr. Jamieson's Dev Project is one such individual. The Career Development missions of the Cancer Center, NanoTUMOR Center and the ICMIC in combination with the T32 awarded to the Dept of Radiology should have a synergistic positive impact on the cellular and molecular imaging effort. The emphasis of the Career Development effort is to focus primarily on Junior Faculty to increase the ranks of the UCSD ICMIC and then on postdoctoral fellows to increase the ranks of well trained investigators. Career Development candidates will be reviewed by the SRC for acceptance and their support will be for one or two years depending on their level of training and particular projects. They will be paired with a basic science and an imaging mentor to help guide their development. Clinical scientists will be supported and will be required to commit 75% of their time to their research training.
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