The Medical Scientist Training (MST) Program at the University of Virginia prepares students for future careers in academic medicine. The goal of our Program is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to lead efforts to identify disease mechanisms, and to treat and cure human disease in the 21st Century. We have developed a highly integrated curriculum, as well as numerous MST policies and programmatic activities (e.g. a monthly research in progress dinner, a Molecular Medicine Seminar series, clinical internships with physician scientists, etc.) to optimize the development of trainees as physician scientists. From the onset, students take a combination of medical, graduate, and unique MST Program courses. These courses, combined with the elective fourth year of the medical curriculum allows students to complete requirements for the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in an average of 7 years. The summer months during the first two years are devoted to completing research rotations. Beginning in year 03, students enter Graduate School in one of six degree-granting basic science departments, two degree-granting interdisciplinary programs, or an affiliated science/engineering department in the college. After completing their Ph.D., students return to Medical School and complete 13 months of required clinical clerkships, as well as elective clerkships as desired. We have an active recruiting program that consists of a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SRIP), faculty visits to undergraduate campuses, and an early admissions program in the fall, in addition to standard admissions in the spring. We have over 150 primary mentors with whom students can conduct their thesis projects in an area of major biomedical significance. All have national level peer review funding and are recognized as leaders in their respective disciplines. We also have many clinician scientist co-mentors who serve to enhance the biomedical relevance/significance of dissertation projects. The program has a track record of its past graduates having highly successful careers as physician scientists at universities, the NIH, and the FDA, and many currently have their own independently funded laboratories. In summary, we feel that the unique training program that we have put in place, combined with our exceptional strengths in the basic and clinical sciences, provide an extremely strong environment for training physician scientists who will become leading academic investigators in this century.
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