The Molecular Biophysics Training grant at Harvard University (first funded in 1989) was designed to take advantage of the strong track record of an existing interdisciplinary Biophysics Graduate Program (originally founded in 1959 to attract students with backgrounds in physics and mathematics into biological research), an increased focus on Chemical Biology at Harvard's Chemistry Department, and a renewed focus on basic research at Harvard Medical School to expand the scope and impact of training in molecular biophysics at Harvard. Over the past 14 years, the training program has helped foster a number of new initiatives in graduate training, and has been remarkably successful in promoting collaborative research among its faculty and interdisciplinary training at the interface between biology, physics, and chemistry. ? ? In this competitive renewal we request support for 16 training slots for predoctoral students, 10-12 of which will be allocated to students in the Biophysics Program, and the remaining slots will be split between students in the graduate program in Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the graduate program in Basic and Biomedical Sciences. In general, students will be assigned to the training program during their first and second years (when they are actively engaged in coursework and research rotations), and will be supported for one to two years. The 40 members of the training faculty are drawn from four departments on the Cambridge campus, six departments on the Medical School Campus and four affiliated Hospitals. The research interests of the training faculty cover a broad range of disciplines relevant to biophysics including structural biology (x-ray crystallography, NMR, electron microscopy, computational chemistry), computational biology/bioinformatics, chemical biology, neurosciences, and advanced imaging technologies. In addition to coursework and research activities, the training program sponsors seminars and guest lectures, a student run, student research seminar series, a yearly retreat featuring a poster session and student and faculty talks in the fall semester, a poster session featuring research of program students and a mini-symposium featuring talks by program faculty during the Biophysics Program recruiting weekend in the spring semester and social events for all trainees. ? ?
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