Support is requested for twelve trainees per year to participate in an ongoing interdisciplinary training program in biotechnology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). The plan described is a well-integrated educational and research training program between the two Universities and includes ten Departments as well as active involvement from industry. For over forty years, Rutgers has been a major research and training center in the fields of industrial microbiology and biotechnology. The current training faculty are spread over many Departments at both Rutgers University and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of UMDNJ. There are significant research programs in the areas of Biological and Engineering Principles in the Production of New Organisms and Biomolecules, Cell and Tissue Engineering Science, and Macromolecular Design and Engineering. The faculty is a closely knit group with overlapping interests in biotechnology and with a history of fruitful interactions. Prospective trainees enter with undergraduate degrees in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, microbiology and genetics. The program entails formal science and engineering graduate courses, laboratory rotations, an industrial internship, an ethics course, and an advanced topics in biotechnology course. Research groups are well equipped and well supported from extramural sources. The senior faculty has extensive experience in training students and the junior faculty is composed of some of the most promising young scientists in the nation. The intellectual climate is excellent and conducive to nurturing interdisciplinary research opportunities and training. The participating graduate programs and departments, together with the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, and the Waksman Institute, have exceptional facilities for biotechnology education and research. The training not only helps to meet national needs for personnel trained to apply the tools and concepts of the quantitative sciences to the solution of significant biological problems, but also has enhanced tremendously the academic environment within the Universities. The requested funds have had a major impact of many of the traditional graduate programs helping to attract a larger pool of outstanding predoctoral students and to unify existing graduate offerings. In addition, the program has helped to bring qualified minority applicants to Rutgers who would not have come otherwise. Explicit matching support from the Universities and from our industrial partners has also been obtained because of the NIH award.
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