This application requests support for the five-year continuation of our NIMH-funded institutional training grant, """"""""Clinical Research Training in Psychiatry"""""""" (T32 MH16804), Years 21-25. The primary goal of this two-year fellowship (three years in selected cases) is to provide rigorous training in the basic foundations and methodological tools necessary for successful clinical investigation in psychiatry. The fellowship is designed for post-residency psychiatrists and PhDs in the behavioral sciences (seven post-doctoral fellows annually). The most important component of the training program continues to be an apprenticeship with an academically successful mentor which, in most cases, leads to successful competition for a research career development award (K01, K08, K23). Trainees develop core skills and knowledge in grant writing and research project management by participating in a weekly research survival skills practicum. The range of didactic offerings has been expanded to include departmentally based mini-courses and workshops in the tracks - translational neuroscience research and intervention research. The secondary goal of the program is to provide research training opportunities, in the form of a summer research elective, to rising second-year medical students (four students yearly), in order to attract a diverse and talented group of medical students into psychiatric research careers. Both components of the program, pre- and postdoctoral, are part of a broad strategy at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry, to respond to the NIH and IOM alarms that clinical researchers (especially in psychiatry) represent an endangered species.
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