Training Clinical Scientists in Radiological Imaging

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The UC San Diego Department of Radiology is resubmitting a competitive renewal of its postdoctoral training grant for medical residents, "Training Clinical Scientists in Radiological Imaging". Following its first five-year funding cycle the department's innovative training program has met with great success. The group of trainees has begun joining academic departments to embark on their own academic careers, with excellent publication records in high impact journals, awards for their work-one for being the most cited article in Neuroimage in 2011-and having already been awarded grants to support their work and 2 NIH R01 grants to support mentor. The growing role of imaging in clinical care and biomedical research has resulted in an acute need for clinician- scientists skilled in cutting-edge imaging science. At present, there exists a talented pool of medical student applicants to academic radiology residency programs across the U.S.A. with >20 MD/PhDs and a >50 MDs that have spent >1 year of dedicate research time during medical school per year. Only a small fraction is enticed to stay in academic radiology and pursue research. The training program described in this proposal builds on the department's proven 4-year clinical training program by adding a full research year at the beginning of residency that is then built upon throughout the clinical training by spending 6 weeks of dedicated research time per year for the balance of the 4 years. Three one-year slots will be made available to applicants to the department's five-year radiology residency program. The goal is to tailor the training program to the individual needs of each applicant and to maximize trainees' research experience at UCSD. Clinical training will focus on areas of specific interest to the trainee in addition to meeting requirements for board certification. The clinical years will be consecutive to maximize trainees' learning; however, trainees will maintain contact with their research mentors throughout their stay at UCSD. The mentorship provided by each laboratory leader during trainees' research year and by the clinical scientist throughout the five-year residency will link their research and clinical experiences and provide them a model for future careers as clinical scientists. In addition to research opportunities and career mentorship, the program includes specialized lectures tailored to the needs of each trainee and workshop specific to academic radiologists. A Match Program-offered integrated training program focusing on the career of clinical scientists ensures equal access to all applicants and allows us to engage residents early in their training, resulting in committed, well-trained clinical scientists. UCSD is well suited to train the next generation of imaging scientists. For this proposal, we have assembled 16 Radiology and 8 non-radiology mentors that together have trained over 300 trainees in the past 10 years, have over 110 active grants and $70M in grant support and their trainees have published nearly 700 papers most of which is in high impact journals.