This proposal is a competitive renewal of an institutional NRSA training grant titled: """"""""Comprehensive Training in Oral and Craniofacial Sciences."""""""" The goal of this program is to integrate ongoing training programs within the Ohio State University Health Sciences Center, under the umbrella of the College of Dentistry, to address the urgent need to train faculty in oral health and craniofacial research. Faculty in the CTOC program recognize the shortage of qualified research faculty in multidisciplinary research to fill positions in academic dentistry. Over the last 15 years, programs have been developed in the OSU College of Dentistry to train academic clinicians in multidisciplinary research. The DDS/PhD and Clinician Scientist programs were started with funding provided by the College. In time, trainees successfully wrote individual NRSA grants to support their training. In this training environment, faculty in the College of Dentistry, together with faculty in the OSU Health Sciences Center, prepared an insitutional NRSA that was funded four years ago. The CTOC program has enriched the training environment for in the College and provides opportunities for: 1) short-term training programs for pre-doctoral students and faculty; 2) predoctoral training in the Oral Biology Ph.D. program and three parallel programs in Integrated Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience/Psychobiology, and Biomedical Engineering; 3) combined DDS/PhD training; and 4) post doctoral training including post PhDs and Clinician/Scientists; 5) long term research training for faculty. The focus of each of these programs is to develop research experiences that will help to recruit, train, and retain qualified academicians in oral health and craniofacial sciences. We have successfully recruited trainees in each of the training programs mentioned above. Currently, there are 9 D.D.S./Ph.D. trainees, 5 predoctoral and 3 postdoctoral trainees (including one faculty member), and 6 short-term dental student trainees. A central focus continues to be the recruitment of highly qualified candidates into flexible training programs that will provide them with long-term success. A second focus is to provide training opportunities for junior faculty. The CTOC program provides an innovative multidisciplinary basic science curriculum based on the mechanisms of human disease, a flexible curriculum in the oral sciences that links trainees from various biomedical programs, and a long-term plan to mentor trainees for careers in academic research.
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