The UC Davis CTSC proposes a new predoctoral and postdoctoral interdisciplinary program to train diverse scholars in clinical and translational research methods. The CTSC with the leaders of this TL1 program will build upon the direction and philosophy of our former successful CTSC predoctoral program and its affiliated partners including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Med-into-Grad program to enhance the interdisciplinary and team science strategies put forth over the past 8 years. There will be a renewed focus on training core competencies in clinical and translational research as well as providing clinical experiences to biomedical trainees recruited from schools and colleges across the UC Davis campus. Diverse scholars and mentors will be recruited from the Schools of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Nursing, and the Colleges of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, and Engineering, all key partners in the past. Our program will be framed over two years (with a one year option for medical students) and focus on rigorous mentoring through the Mentoring Academy with monitoring of scholar progress and the training performance of the mentoring teams. In addition, the program will provide a creative training and scientific milieu facilitating career development to the next stage of the scholars' research careers, either as independent researchers in academic, government, or private research laboratories, or as high-level translational team research scholars. This TL1 program adds substantial value to UC Davis and our CTSC, and uniquely facilitates training and interactions among PhD, MD, and DVM trainees. We view the partnerships forged through the CTSC and trainees as essential to creating a rich interactive research environment and the strong foundation for team science of the future. Our goals are to: create individual training pathways to develop a diverse workforce that crosses disciplinary boundaries, enhance mentoring capacity within the CTSC in the fields of Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Nutrition, and Biological Sciences to support translational team science, and expand training opportunities for all UC Davis Clinical and Translational Research Scholars. While we emphasize the outstanding foundation and the accumulated experience upon which this program has been built, the proposed training program will begin anew with the added capacity to engage postdoctoral scholars across the UC Davis campus. Overall, the TL1 is well positioned to accomplish new goals and objectives through the opportunities afforded by a strong partnership with the UC Davis CTSC, diverse schools and colleges across UC Davis, and unique resources and related NIH-supported programs.
