The proposed program will provide uninterrupted and continuing support for two years of postgraduate research training in the Health Sciences Division of Columbia University to qualified applicants who have completed their postgraduate clinical training in anesthesiology. The program will provide for three trainees, one or two in their fifth and two or one in their sixth postgraduate year. Research opportunities are offered by nineteen participating faculty members with proven records of success in the training of postdoctoral fellows, both within the Department of Anesthesiology as well as from seven collaborating departments, four in the basic sciences: Pharmacology, Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Anatomy and Cell Biology, and the multidisciplinary Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, and three clinical departments: Medicine, Surgery, and Psychiatry. Research areas include, but are not limited to, modulation of neurotransmission by excitatory amino acids, acetylcholine receptors and ion channels, including calcium, the biology of inflammation and coagulation, neuronal mechanisms of behavior, cytokine biology, airway smooth muscle signaling, mechanisms of cocaine excitotoxicity, adenosine receptor physiology, and developmental autonomic receptor pharmacology. During the first year, the trainee will familiarize him or herself with the problems being investigated in the laboratory of the chosen participating faculty member, as well as the research techniques being used in that laboratory by participating in ongoing research projects. Toward the end of this period of assimilation it is expected that the trainee, with appropriate guidance, will formulate an independent project to be carried out largely during the second year of training, using procedures and techniques learned during the first year. With the continued support of the Department of Anesthesiology following training, this program will lead to the establishment of independent physician-investigators using modern methods and techniques to help meet the research needs of the specialty of anesthesiology in the twenty first century.
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