Biophysics Training Program

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Project Summary / Abstract The Biophysics Training Program (BTP) is a new interdisciplinary predoctoral training program at the University of California at Berkeley. The BTP will be the only training program at UC Berkeley focusing on biophysics. The BTP will recruit and appoint six trainees per year to train in the field of biophysics, drawn from a pool of 640 applicants and 40 matriculants per year in the Biophysics and Molecular and Cell Biology PhD programs. Trainees will be appointed for two-year terms and will continue to engage with the BTP training activities and community-building events through to graduation. We aim to have at least 20% of our trainees coming from underrepresented minority (URM) groups. We expect that 100% of our students will graduate with a PhD within 6 years, with a target mean time to degree of 5.5 years for all students, and with no differential between students from URM and non-URM backgrounds. Our goal is that every student will publish a first or co- first author paper in a peer-reviewed journal recognized as excellent in the field of biophysics, and will subsequently pursue a research-related career in academia, industry, or government. Professional development will be centered on the acquisition of ten core competences designed to enable leadership in any of these workforce sectors. Training procedures will be informed by the latest scientific literature in the field of research mentorship and training, and will emphasize the acquisition of self-efficacy and sense of belonging. Research training will be enhanced in response to the latest advances in biophysics, including the rapidly growing importance of machine learning in structural biology and data analysis. A series of training innovations have been incorporated into the BTP, including a new hands-on computational modeling course in the physics of the cell, short boot camp courses in cryo-EM and single molecule microscopy, and advanced training in laboratory safety and record keeping. The effectiveness of the training program will be rigorously evaluated on an annual basis and advice sought from newly-constituted student and external advisory groups. All 23 of the BTP training faculty are members of the Graduate Group in Biophysics (GGB), and our trainees will be drawn from the GGB and the Molecular and Cell Biology PhD program. Our faculty are world leaders in their fields and include six members of the National Academy of Sciences, six Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators, and a recent recipient of both the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and Nobel Prize in Chemistry. All BTP faculty undergo formal mentorship training and evaluation of mentoring quality.