The proposed program, Empowering Nextgen Advanced Biomedical Leadership (ENABL), is a cohesive set of educational offerings and ancillary resources developed, overseen, and administered by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Meetings & Courses staff. The educational offerings are composed of in-residence short courses and workshops aimed at graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and independent investigators that are designed to develop skills in laboratory research, leadership/management, and scientific writing. Four of the courses currently exist and are held annually: three are two-week laboratory courses (Antibody Engineering & Phage Display, Single Cell Analysis, and Synthetic Biology) and one is a four-day workshop (Leadership in Bioscience). Two of the ENABL courses are new and proposed as part of this application: one is a new two-week laboratory course in Metabolomics and the other is a new four-day Scientific Writing Retreat. Historically, CSHL courses have proven to be natural environments for career discussions and mentorship. Indeed, past participants describe the courses as unparalleled professional networking experiences. We therefore expect strong mentoring relationships to likewise develop in the courses and workshops that are part of ENABL. The program will also have significant components in the areas of dissemination and outreach. In particular, we propose to develop freely available video archives of formal lectures, invited talks, and tutorials for the four laboratory courses (Antibody Engineering & Phage Display, Single Cell Analysis, Synthetic Biology, and Metabolomics). In total, ENABL will directly affect approximately 110 trainees each year, plus countless more who will benefit from the publicly available video archives developed as part of the program.
Practicing scientists, from graduate students and research technicians to tenured independent investigators, often must learn new techniques, paradigms, or even entire subfields as part of their continuing research programs. This need can arise, for example, from rapid advances in experimental technology or a move toward interdisciplinary research questions. When faced with such a need, many scientists learn the new techniques piecemeal from different laboratories at their home institutions, a process that can take months. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) runs a number of specialized, in- residence short courses and workshops that allow practicing scientists to become rapidly and efficiently immersed in a new set of concepts and techniques. The proposed program, Empowering Nextgen Advanced Biomedical Leadership (ENABL), is a cohesive set of courses, workshops, and ancillary resources designed and administered by CSHL.
