Training in the Neuroscience of Mental Health

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this training program (the Biomedical Neuroscience Training Program) is to develop and train basic and clinical scientists to understand the biology of the brain and mind and to be well versed in current therapies for psychiatric illness. The trainees are presented with a program that will allow them to do research in a number of laboratories studying anything from the molecular and cellular biology of neurons to imaging of the brain in psychiatric patients. This comprehensive program allows trainees to develop novel experimental approaches to both discovery and therapy. The Biomedical Neuroscience Training Program will also instill skills necessary to help clinical trainees more effectively research the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of psychiatric disease. Our challenge is to integrate molecular and cellular neurobiology with higher order systems so that the confluence between brain and mind can be better understood. Trainers have been carefully selected to provide an environment where basic and clinical trainees will enrich each other's experience and learn to work together in the spirit of truly translational research. These trainers are housed in several departments within the College of Medicine at UIC, but are committed to the training program as a single entity. Candidates will be a mix of graduate students (both PhD and MD/PhD), postdoctoral fellows (both psychiatry residents and PhD or MD/PhD researchers) and medical students engaged in part-time research. Thus, in addition to pure research training, a specific goal of the program is to train psychiatrists to engage in research and to excite medical students about the possibility of a career in clinical neuroscience research. The program will also support a series of colloquia expected to deliver current data and speculation about both basic and clinical neuroscience. Finally, it is emphasized that a strength of this program is its ability to recruit and train underrepresented minorities and to bring them into the ranks of researchers in neurobiology and psychiatry.