Obesity is a major source of morbidity and mortality and of heart, lung, and blood related morbidity and mortality in particular. This renewal application for a highly successful interdisciplinary pre-doctoral training program offers coordinated mentorship, didactic training, career development activities, and supervised research experiences to prepare PhD students for careers as independent investigators. The established pre- doctoral program will build on the momentum of a highly successful first funding cycle and complements and interfaces with our existing NIH-funded T32 program for post-doctoral training in obesity research. Students entering their 2nd year of PhD training enroll in a formal integrated program tailored to individual interests. Trainees participate in the investigative programs of UAB's NIH-funded Nutrition Obesity Research Center, one of only 12 such centers nation-wide. Each trainee has an individual mentoring team consisting of a primary mentor and two co-mentors with one mentor from each of three major disciplinary domains (Biomedical; Behavioral/Social; Quantitative/Physical). The faculty's disciplinary diversity (physicists, physicians, psychologists, statisticians, physiologists, geneticists, epidemiologists, etc.) and strong collaborative ties facilitates multidisciplinary training. Students from any UAB department may apply, but must have a mentoring team from this T32 program's approved faculty. All students, regardless of their departmental affiliation, participate in all activities nd coursework for this T32 program. Individuals are recruited from the large pool of eligible 1st year PhD students on campus and selected via formal application and committee review, based on graduate school performance, faculty recommendations, and consideration of the degree to which their interests fit with those of the faculty and ongoing research programs. All trainees must have as a future plan an investigative career in obesity-related research. The program promotes an approach to investigation that is scientifically and ethically rigorous. Regular reviews of individual trainees with the program directors ensure that adequate progress toward an independent research career is made. Given: (1) the highly successful first 4 years of our program; (2) that our pool of high-quality eligible applicants radically exceeds the slots availabl; and (3) that we have been successful in recruiting a proportion of students from underrepresented backgrounds that exceeds the national average by more than a factor of 3, we respectfully request renewal of this program with a progressive increase from the existing 8 to a total of 12 slots.
Obesity is a highly prevalent condition that exacts a high price in suffering for afflicted individuals and economically for society. Causes are complex, manifold, and only partially understood and available treatments are only modest in efficacy. New scientific insights are badly needed and training a new generation of multidisciplinary obesity researchers is essential to meet that objective.
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