The Comparative Medical Science Training Program endeavors to provide graduate veterinarians with scientific, communicative, and inter-professional skills to become independent research scientists and scientists who contribute to interdisciplinary biomedical research. In addition to providing rigorous research training, the training program emphasizes the role of research veterinarians as part of the larger comparative medicine community, which includes MD scientists, PhD scientists, laboratory animal clinicians and pathologists (both MD and DVM) in order to foster an appreciation for the full spectrum of clinical- and research-oriented individuals in biomedical research. Biomedical research is increasingly inter-disciplinary, and veterinarians trained in comparative medical research must not only be proficient in their individual research areas, but also provide expertise in animal modeling, such as mouse biology. The national shortage of veterinarians contributing to biomedical research has been documented by the National Academies. The National Center for Research Resources, NIH, has placed research training of veterinarians as a high program priority in order to address this deficiency. Veterinarians are well-suited for biomedical research because of their comparative medical training, their expertise in laboratory animals, and their talent for animal modeling of human disease. This training program will take place within the Center for Comparative Medicine, a highly productive research center that is co-sponsored by the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of California at Davis. The Center houses MD, MD/PhD, DVM/PhD and PhD research scientists with a broad array of expertise who investigate animal models of human disease, including infectious diseases, cancer, mouse biology, and genomics. Center faculty interface with a number of closely linked programs and centers that contribute to the training environment, including the Mouse Biology Program, the California National Primate Research Center, the Center for Laboratory Animal Science, the University of California Davis Medical Center, and the Cancer Center. Faculty within the Center for Comparative Medicine as well as faculty in other linked programs will provide the mentoring for students, thereby providing maximal opportunity to match students with their areas of interest.
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