Career Enhancement Program

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PROJECT SUMMARY – CAREER ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM (CEP) Despite recent gains, driven in part by Hillman Cancer Center (HCC) HN SPORE-funded research, translational research in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) lags that of many other malignancies. The HCC HN SPORE is uniquely positioned to build upon its past successes and foster the next generation of translational scientists studying HNSCC. The Career Enhancement Program (CEP) of the HCC HN SPORE has been designed to attract, educate and mentor a new, diverse group of scientists committed to understanding and eradicating HNSCC. HCC and the University of Pittsburgh have committed substantial funding and infrastructure to this endeavor, with institutional matching to double the number of CEP awards given annually. Moreover, the HCC HN SPORE is committed to diversity and has recently established collaborations with Johns Hopkins, Howard University, Emory University and Meharry Medical College to increase the participation of under-represented minorities in the HCC HN SPORE CEP and, indeed, through the entirety of the program. In addition, we have appointed Dr. Tullia Bruno, as Co-Director of the CEP. She is a previous CEP awardee, member of the HCC Women’s Task Force (an initiative launched by Dr. Ferris in late 2017, which addresses gender issues among the female faculty at the Cancer Center) and co-leader of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Association for Women in Science, to assist in increasing our number of female applicants and awardees. Potential CEP awardees will be new to the study of HNSCC, either because they are junior faculty who are establishing their careers; established investigators studying other scientific questions who wish to transition to HNSCC; or clinical investigators well versed in the design and performance of clinical trials who wish to broaden their translation research experience. The selection process for these awards are rigorous and include all aspects of HNSCC research. Once awarded, the CEP grantee will meet regularly with a more established HNSCC investigator with an established record of successful mentorship as well as a mentoring team. They will be encouraged to participate in courses in clinical and translational research and participate in mock study sections where their extramural funding applications will be scored by their mentoring team. The goal of this program is to develop CEP awardees research into larger projects as well as diverse next generation of HNSCC researchers.