This application proposes the successful continuation of the Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in AIDS (IRTPA) at Duke University home to an outstanding group of faculty mentors with the Duke Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). The diverse portfolio of funding (~$64.5M total for HIV/AIDS research), including new grants from the outstanding retention and recruitment of young investigators, provides a wide range of opportunities for research with the scientists who comprise the IRTPA faculty. Over the 29 years, our program has had considerable success, consistently filling all six training slots at a time. Ninety-nine percent of our 75 research trainees (31 MDs, 41 PhDs, 2 MD/PhD, 1 DO) have productive careers in academia, biomedical research, or public health. Out of the 16 trainees appointed to our training grant under the current program directors, 31% (5) were underrepresented minorities, and 63% (10) were female. There is 1 year remaining in this award cycle, and several new trainees will be starting their appointment in September 2019. These achievements reflect the careful selection of highly qualified and motivated young researchers, nurtured in an exceptionally rich training environment. Objectives and Rationale. Our vision moving forward is to continue to provide an innovative program built upon state-of-the art interdisciplinary training for the next generation of scientists. Since the last re- competition of this grant, we further focused training to equip postdoctoral scientists to be at the forefront of identifying solutions to the most important problems impacting persons living with or at risk of HIV. Research Training Program. Trainees engage in the program for two to three years appointments and choose a Program track: I. HIV Immunology, II. HIV/Viral Pathogenesis, III. Adult Clinical HIV/Infectious Diseases, IV. Pediatric & Maternal-Child HIV, V. Global Health, or VI. Social and Behavioral Sciences and select from one or more ?Enrichment Opportunities?: Duke Scholars in Molecular Medicine, Human Vaccines, Health Policy, Biomedical Engineering, and Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. Trainees must complete required training activities such as Training in Responsible Conduct of Research, Human and Animal Research, Scientific Writing, Grant Development, Presentation Skills, State of the Art Technology Data Integrity, and Statistics for Biomedical Sciences. With this award, we anticipate training another 13 post-doctoral MD and PhD level researchers to successfully lead high impact research.
/PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Identifying solutions for HIV-1 and emerging global requires combined expertise and collaboration among scientists. A new generation of scientists is needed who are trained across disciplines to enable real world solutions to complex problems. Efficiency and innovation in the detection, tracking, treatment and prevention of HIV-1 and other infectious diseases is made possible by investing in training young investigators to become facile in thinking and working across multiple disciplines to solve complex problems.
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