UCLA Post-Graduate Training Program in Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and Mental Health The University of California, Los Angeles, Post-Graduate Training Program in Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and Mental Health serves as a major campus facilitator for bridging training in the fields of behavioral science, neuroscience, and immunology, and is the sole comprehensive campus training program integrating concerns of basic and clinical immunologists with those of a wide range of neuroscientists and behavioral investigators. PNI is a scientific field that investigates bi-directional interactions among the neural, endocrine, and immune systems, and that studies inflammatory biology dynamics in behavior, with implications for mental health. Given its broad faculty resources, the training program familiarizes trainees with the diversity of information that is necessary for creative problem solving in basic and clinical PNI research, and provides a supportive yet critical research training environment with one-on-one supervision of research fellows. These training opportunities coupled with scientific review of fellows'research progress optimize the ability of trainees to achieve discrete training goals, project new experiments, and develop into competent and highly imaginative scientists with independent academic careers. Indeed, this training grant has taken optimal advantage of an active PNI faculty over the last 20 years and produced multiple outstanding PNI researchers such as Michael Irwin, Margaret Kemeny, Gayle Page, Steve Cole, and Julie Bower. Our goal in this training grant is to continue the multi-disciplinary education and training of 3 postdoctoral students from various backgrounds, chosen by virtue of their past records in creative and innovative research. Fellows are to work on their own projects under the mentorship of selected faculty who have a proven record of PNI research excellence. Our approach is to integrate clinical understanding along with state-of-the-art behavioral, neurobiological, and molecular neuroimmunological techniques. By combining a high level of methodological sophistication about clinically relevant issues and mechanisms with a firm grounding in behavior, neuroscience and immunology, we believe that the scientific knowledge base of PNI will be markedly advanced;such critical strategies engage trainees in the process of discovery of immune mechanisms that might underlie mental health disorders.
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