Boston Children's Hospital is home to the world's largest research enterprise at any Pediatric Institution in the USA. This infrastructure has allowed our T32 program to offer pediatric nephrology fellows extensive research training opportunities in broad areas of relevance to pediatric renal disease. Our Training Faculty are leaders in their fields and have significant experience in mentorship, and their research interests represent the diversity of basic, translational and clinical research in the discipline of nephrology. Our administrative structure is designed to recruit MD trainees with previous research experience as well as MD/PhD trainees into our program. In the last cycle of funding, we advanced our efforts at recruitment from incoming and current residents at Boston Children's, from MD Pediatric Nephrology postdoctoral fellows who seek out our faculty for advanced research training and from MD Pediatric Nephrology trainees who match into our program for ACGME-approved pediatric nephrology fellowship training. These three pools of candidates increased the size of our research training program in the current cycle and have made appointments to the T32 somewhat competitive with our current 4 postgraduate slots/year. Every slot is filled each year, and we have an additional 2-4 T32-eligible trainees in our program who do not receive funding. Over the past 5 years, a total of 23 T32- eligible trainees and 44 non-TGE-eligible postdoctoral trainees were enrolled in our renal research training program. These 67 trainees contributed to a total of 368 citations over the reporting period representing an average of ~1 citation/trainee/year. There were a total of 14 T32-funded trainees enrolled in our program during the past 5 years and they contributed to 149 citations (76 manuscripts and 73 abstracts) representing an average of ~2 publications per trainee per year (~1 manuscript/year and ~1 abstract/year). In addition, a total of 10 T32-funded trainees (71%) received at least one award or grant (a total of 19 grants) for their training and research activities over the last five years and all T32-funded trainees participated in courses and/or workshops to support career development activities. In the next cycle of funding, we plan to sustain recruitment, so that we continue to have more T32-eligible trainees in our program/year than slots. In addition, we will further restructure our program to enhance the competitiveness of our trainees in the current era of decreased NIH funding by first, establishing new initiatives to provide rigorous oversight by experienced NIH- funded faculty for transition from T32 to K award (or similar) funding; and second, by providing financial incentivizes to stimulate the solicitation of grants and research training for a third year (beyond the typical 2 years). In order to advance these collective initiatives and provide a third year of dedicated research training to at least one candidate, we request 5 postgraduate trainee slots in the next cycle of funding. Overall, our extensive infrastructure, our experienced faculty and our restructured training plan will provide trainees comprehensive opportunities for productive research careers in the field of pediatric nephrology.
The goal of this T32 is to train committed individuals in basic, translational and clinical research so that they may develop an understanding of the pathogenesis of pediatric renal disease. In the next cycle of funding, we plan to enhance the competitiveness and productivity of our trainees through enhanced oversight and incentives for career-development in broad areas of relevance to pediatric renal disease. We anticipate that this T32 will continue to initiate the careers of individuals who make fundamental discoveries and promote innovation in the science of pediatric nephrology.
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