Engineering Approaches to Molecular Imaging Training

描述（由申请人提供）： 快速发展的分子成像领域寻求开发用于非侵入性成像特定基因和蛋白质靶点的策略，其目标是更好地理解体内疾病的发生和进展，并加速将生物科学中的基础知识转化为临床中的新诊断和治疗方法。这是一个高度跨学科的研究领域，涉及来自生物，工程，物理和医学科学的科学家。最近，许多成像，制药和生物技术公司已经建立了分子成像计划。无论是在学术界还是工业界，最成功的项目将是那些将上述不同领域很好地整合在一起的项目，这些项目由多学科科学家领导，这些科学家经过足够的深度和广度的培训，能够产生新的想法并指导这些想法的执行。我们博士前培训计划的目标是为学术界和工业界培养分子成像领域的下一代领导者。 该培训计划以生物医学工程为基础，这是一门旨在无缝整合工程，生物学和医学的学科。它是成像科学的天然家园，是分子成像研究的基础。我们建议每年支持六名博士前学生，精心构建的课程将为他们提供工程，细胞和分子生物学，生理学，仪器仪表，合成化学和数学方面的基础知识。分子成像课程将介绍这些基础知识，并向学生展示如何将其应用于特定的生物学问题。学员可以从16名教师导师中选择，这些导师涵盖了分子成像研究课题的广度。此外，学员还可以参加为期3个月的实习，以获得工业经验，参加每月的分子成像杂志俱乐部，并参加国际分子成像会议，亲眼目睹该领域的最新发展，并与从事类似研究的其他科学家建立联系。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The rapidly growing field of molecular imaging seeks to develop strategies for non-invasively imaging specific gene and protein targets with the goal of better understanding disease initiation and progression in vivo and accelerating the translation of basic knowledge in the biological sciences into new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in the clinic. This is a highly interdisciplinary research field, involving scientists from the biological, engineering, physical and medical sciences. Recently, many imaging, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have set up molecular imaging programs. The most successful programs, whether in academia or industry, will be those in which the diverse fields listed above are well integrated, and which are led by multidisciplinary scientists that are trained in sufficient depth and breadth to generate new ideas and direct the execution of those ideas. The goal of our predoctoral training program is to train the next generation of leaders in the molecular imaging field for both academia and industry. This training program is based in biomedical engineering, a discipline that seeks to seamlessly integrate engineering, biology and medicine. It is a natural home for the imaging science that is the foundation for molecular imaging research. We propose to support six predoctoral students per year with a carefully constructed curriculum that will provide them with fundamental knowledge in engineering, cell & molecular biology, physiology, instrumentation, synthetic chemistry, and mathematics. A course in molecular imaging will take these fundamentals and show students how to apply them to particular biologic questions. Trainees can select from 16 faculty mentors that span the breadth of molecular imaging research topics. In addition, trainees can take 3- month internships to gain industrial experience, participate in a monthly molecular imaging journal club, and attend an international molecular imaging conference to see at first-hand the latest developments in the field and form connections with other scientists working on similar research.