INTERDEPARTMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE PROGRAM

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted From The Abstract Provided By Applicant): The goal of this proposal, submitted to the joint pre-doctoral training program, is to support graduate training in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP) of Yale University. We are requesting a total of 10 positions, for five 1st year and five 2nd year graduate students. The INP is the university-wide graduate program in the Neurosciences at Yale. The program is now entering its 12th year, and consists of 89 faculty from 19 departments and programs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Yale Medical School. We currently have 49 graduate students in the program. Although the students do their research in host departments, the graduate students in the INP are admitted to Yale through a unified Neuroscience track, and upon matriculation into the INP remain within the program until their graduation, when they receive the Ph.D. in Neuroscience. The program is led by two co-Directors, Drs. Haig Keshishian and Charles Greer, a Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), a Director of Graduate Admissions, and an executive committee representing a broad cross-section of the neuroscience community at Yale. Haig Keshishian will serve as program director for the training grant. The INP also receives support from the university in the form of a salaried program administrator and a clerical assistant, office space, and eight graduate fellowships. It also undergoes regular academic reviews by the University. Trainees are selected from a pool of approximately 90 U.S./permanent resident applicants, with about 20 being offered admission, for an entering class of 8-10 U.S. students each year (1999 class 11 U.S. students). Currently 10% of the students in the program are from underrepresented ethnic and/or racial groups, and the program, together with the University, is actively involved in the recruiting of minority graduate students to Yale. The entering students follow a specified course of study, consisting of three core semester-long graduate classes in neuroscience, three advanced elective courses, program seminars and research in progress presentations, seminars on the ethical conduct of research, and a system of laboratory research rotations. All students are continuously supervised by the DGS and the student advisory committees. In the second year of training, the students complete their rotations and affiliate with their doctoral research laboratories. They take their doctoral qualifier examination, which has both an oral and written component, before the end of year two. Upon successfully defending a dissertation prospectus by the end of year three, the students advance to candidacy for the Ph.D. Yale is fortunate is having a broad base of active neuroscience researchers, permitting the students to have the widest possible range of options with respect to research. This includes faculty in the MCDB, MB&B, Psychology and Computer Science departments on the main campus, as well as faculty from several basic science and clinical departments in the Medical School. In addition, the program includes faculty in departments centered in the VA hospital, the Connecticut Mental Health Center, and other Yale-affiliated research groups in the neurosciences.