Microbes in Health and Disease

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ABSTRACT Our community of investigators seeks renewed support for years 15 to 20 of a pre- and post-doctoral training program that addresses the role of microbes in health and disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Microbiology is fundamentally important to human health due to the prevalence and consequence of infectious diseases. Its significance has been elevated by bioterrorism, discovery of the unforseen roles for microbes in causing certain human maladies, and in promoting normal human physiology and health. The proposed Microbes in Health and Disease (MHD) training program represents the natural and synergistic synthesis of the broad disciplines of microbial pathogenesis, beneficial microbiology, and host responses. MHD will have its physical and intellectual home in a state-of-the-art Microbial Sciences Building where basic and clinical scientists interact and collaborate, providing a strong sense of place, cohesion and identity to the Training Program. Our pre-doctoral trainees are drawn chiefly from the Microbiology Doctoral Training Program (MDTP), a top ranked graduate program. Our post-doctoral fellows are drawn from a strong pool of PhD and Infectious Disease MD fellows, the latter from Pediatrics and Internal Medicine programs with a strong history of placing fellows into academic medicine. MHD holds bi-weekly meetings, hosts invited speakers, and has a website and listserve. Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Bacteriology, Medicine and Pediatrics are core departments of MHD and MDTP activities, and offer required didactic, journal club and seminar courses to our trainees. Instruction is provided in host-microbe interactions, microbial pathogenesis, immunology, infectious disease, translational medicine, and responsible conduct of research. Our 35 trainers span 9 departments in 4 colleges and collaborate with each other in research and teaching. All trainers are productive scientists with proven NIH or equivalent funding records and strong records of graduate training. Most are tenured (23 full, 7 associate professors) and 5 promising junior faculty trainers will be mentored by senior training faculty. The training program faculty are dedicated to recruiting outstanding students and fellows, including focused efforts for minority candidates, and are committed to pre- and post-doctoral mentoring and didactic and research training. To support these efforts, and the NIH-stated need to train scientists in the area of microbes in health and disease, support is requested for 8 trainees annually: 5 predoctoral trainees and 3 postdoctoral trainees, including two MD and one PhD fellows. Each trainee is mentored by a committee consisting of a thesis advisor or mentor and 4 other faculty, and all trainees are also co-mentored by virtue of joint trainer service on these committees. Our program and trainers are highly regarded in the scientific community, and fill a unique niche on campus and a critical national need. The success of the program in the prior 5-year cycle is evidenced by 66 publications among the 14 trainees (mean, 4.7 per trainee) that have completed training to date, and their progress into competitive postdoctoral positions or academic, industry or government research careers.