Promoting Excellence in Medicine: The University Medicine Essen Clinician Scientist Academy (UMEA)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The University Medicine Essen Clinician Scientist Academy (UMEA) aims to promote excellence in Medicine. Since its start in 2019, the Faculty of Medicine and University Medicine Essen achieved a number of structural and scientific aims. We competitively recruited and established career paths for 35 talented clinicians endowing them with protected research time and specialist clinical training in an internationally-competitive research environment. Additionally we recruited and prepared 28 high-ability junior clinicians at the start of their residency training to pursue an academic career by introducing junior clinician stipends. We installed additional career development measures and successfully established step-up career opportunities for advanced clinician scientists (UMEA², BMBF funded advanced clinician scientist programme 2021) to become independent principle investigators and attain leadership positions. Research within UMEA is conducted in three Translational Excellence Areas focusing on the Interfaces between: Brain and Heart, Oncology and Immunology, and Transplantation, Immunology and Infectiology. Research activities bridging the three areas were established to form new research consortia and resulted in recent invitations for full grant proposal of 2 further SFBs and 1 GRK. Moreover, digital health data research and machine learning have been established as a new research asset to support precision medicine and interconnect the three Translational Excellence Areas. In particular the faculty’s new Institute of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and the new GRK 2535 offer exciting perspectives for young clinician scientists’ research projects in UMEA’s second funding period.