Postdoctoral training in genomic medicine research

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The overarching goal of this NRSA application is to provide a high quality mentored training experience for promising clinical and translational researchers in the rapidly growing area of genomic and precision medicine to gain the knowledge and skills to enable them to successfully establish independent clinical research programs. Future genomic medicine investigators will require a strong foundation of specialized training to continue making new discoveries and to develop the translational research programs that enable implementation of new genomic discoveries into clinical care. We propose a 2-year postdoctoral training program, offering trainees a range of research opportunities in applied clinical and translational genomic medicine research (wet or dry lab), bioinformatics and computational biology, engineering, and statistics to eligible applicants with an MD or PhD. We are requesting 2 training slots in Year 1, and 4 slots thereafter. At least three existing or proposed T32 programs at Duke will donate a slot to this T32 leveraging the NIH investment in this program. Duke’s commitment to interdisciplinary research in genomic medicine will attract promising and diverse post-doctoral fellows across the life sciences. We have assembled 27 senior investigators as mentors and 24 junior investigators as co-mentors for this program. The mentored research experience will require trainees to establish, with the assistance of the program directors (PDs), an interdisciplinary mentoring team consisting of 2 or 3 mentors to guide their research program and career development. The research training experience will be designed to provide specialized training and will also consider broader issues impacted by their research including ethical, legal, and social implications. Supporting their research will be laboratory rotations for select research techniques, a suite of coursework and informal learning opportunities. A minimal core set of courses in genomics, clinical research, statistics and ethics must be completed by each trainee; additional elective courses may be taken to support the trainee’s research focus. Trainees will be required to meet with the PDs quarterly. Regular meetings of the trainee and his/her mentorship team will provide ongoing assessment of progress that will be reported and evaluated by the PDs and the program’s Executive Committee. Trainees will be required to present their research at Duke conferences and at national meetings and submit manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications. The mentorship team and the Executive Committee will assist each trainee to apply for grant opportunities and obtain a post- fellowship faculty position in academia or relevant sector that will allow continuation of his/her research. Trainees must spend at least 75% effort while they are supported; the trainees’ clinical experience will be highly focused on the practice of genomic medicine in genomic medicine practice environments at Duke. Trainees in this program will benefit from the rich and highly interdisciplinary resources available at Duke for clinical and translational genomic medicine research and build upon its strong history and experience in post- doctoral training.