This is a competitive renewal, for years 16 to 20, of an institutional HIV/AIDS training grant. This training grant serves as the focal point for providing high quality training for advanced pre- and post-doctoral candidates who wish to pursue independent careers in HIV/AIDS-related topics. The program will offer broad training in modern biology including virological, immunological, biochemical, genetic and molecular approaches. AIDS-related research in this institute conforms to the principle that successful AIDS research requires multiple investigators pursuing closely related issues in AIDS. This training grant thus represents a platform for training and research by 16 faculty from four basic science, and two clinical Departments: Microbiology and Immunology, Genetics, Pathology, Biochemistry, Pediatrics and Medicine. Fourteen of the faculty are bench researchers, one is epidemiologist and one is a behavioral researcher. All training faculty of this program are members of the Einstein-Montefiore Center For AIDS Research, which provides centralized, essential core facilities required for AIDS research such as Virology, Flow cytometry, Animal Biohazard, Immunology and Clinical cores. Our predoctoral training program operates within the guidelines of the Sue Golding Graduate Division, featuring a centralized recruitment program and a well coordinated admissions process. This training program offers a core of basic courses followed by specialized courses in Virology, Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology supplemented with journal clubs, work-in-progress meetings and seminars by outside experts for both pre- and postdoctoral trainees. An essential element is the intensive research program within each laboratory with close supervision throughout. Our program also includes training in specialized instrumentation and new technologies as needed for the specific research project: Flow cytometry, Hybridoma, Transgenic Mouse, Gene Knockout and Stem Cell Technology, X-ray Crystallography and Molecular Modeling, Peptide Synthesis & Protein Sequencing, Proteomics, Epigenomics, Gene arrays as well as routine DNA synthesis and sequencing. In the renewal application, featuring a recently expanded HIV/AIDS faculty, an augmented support from CFAR and a close interaction with the global AIDS program, we will pursue an integrated approach to HIV and opportunistic infections research with a major emphasis on molecular studies of HIV/AIDS and two major opportunistic pathogens (M. tuberculosis and C. neoformans) including development of chemotherapeutics, vaccine and immune therapies and murine models to study the pathogenesis of AIDS.
This is an institutional training grant, which aims to train future scientists. Two broad categories of training are proposed: one leads to a doctorate degree and the second is for those who already have a doctorate degree. The individuals will train in a rich environment with experienced, accomplished scientists doing cutting edge AIDS research using modern biomedical facilities and will learn to conduct high quality research. The training is expected to generate mature scientists who would contribute to reducing the burden of AIDS disease.
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