The Johns Hopkins graduate program in Cell, Molecular, Developmental Biology and Biophysics (CMDB) has a long history of recruiting and training young scientists. Our students are recruited from a pool of outstanding undergraduates, and our efforts to recruit students from disadvantaged groups has greatly increased their participation in our training program. On graduation, our students are among the top Ph.D. recipients in the country, winning national and international recognition for their work. Indeed, during the past training grant period, two of our students have been recognized with Harold M. Weintraub awards, given to the top graduate students in the country. Our students go on to excellent positions when they leave our program and many continue on the academic track and populate the faculty of leading colleges and universities. This training grant is the primary mechanism for funding the 18-22 graduate students who enter the CMDB program each year. We are committed to providing our students with a broad but integrated training experience. Our training faculty represents a wide range of research interests, from quantitative, biophysical studies to modern developmental genetics, with strong molecular and cellular research in between. This diverse group is highly integrated by shared courses, seminars and retreats. Students acquire foundational knowledge in all disciplines through core courses and rotations, before specializing in their thesis research. This facilitates the training of well-rounded scientists who can operate at interdisciplinary interfaces. We also feel that there is more to becoming a scientist than just excellent training in the laboratory. Our goal is to train researchers who are excellent communicators and educators, and who are involved in the community at the local and national levels. Toward this goal, we have expanded specific aspects of our training program that develop our students' scientific communication and teaching skills, and we encourage them to engage the community through scientific outreach. This is an exciting time for the CMDB graduate program and the integration of the different departments represented in the program into a cohesive training faculty and student body has never been better. New faculty hires in the associated departments are further enhancing the connections between the departments, and allowing us to introduce new areas of modern biology and genomics into our training faculty. These new hires will also allow us to significantly expand the number of graduate students that we train, and who are supported by this training grant. The present renewal application describes the gains we have made during the past grant period, and our plans move forward with a philosophy similar to what has already made our program a success - a dedication to a broad, interdisciplinary scientific training, an emphasis on creating scientists who are excellent communicators and educators who are actively engaged in their local communities, and a mission to recruit, nurture and promote excellence in the next generation of biomedical researchers.
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