Training Program in Neuroengineering and Medicine

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The aim of our multidisciplinary institutional training program, based in the Schools of Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, is to train predoctoral engineering students and physician postdoctoral fellows in Neuroengineering and its clinical translation. Disorders of the nervous system, such as stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, depression, dementia, and head trauma, constitute 35% of all disease and disability, and the burden is rising. There is an explosion of promising therapies for these disorders in new technologies to image, analyze, and modulate neural circuits, but translating these therapies from the laboratory to patients is a challenge. It requires talented engineers educated in clinical science and technically proficient physicians who speak the same language. Together these investigators must navigate a complex scientific, regulatory, and clinical landscape. Despite the huge demand, few formal, interdisciplinary Neuroengineering training programs exist. Our program is shared by the Penn Schools of Medicine and Engineering focused on Neuroengineering and Clinical Translation and recruits from an excellent pool of ~60 MD fellows and 55-75 PhD students each year. Physician and Engineering trainees will together become fluent in cutting-edge technologies at the forefront of Neuroengineering, such as devices, neurostimulation, machine learning, algorithm development, cloud computing, nanotechnology and materials science. They will innovate new therapies for human disease and gain a thorough understanding of the clinical, regulatory, and developmental environments necessary to safely bring new technologies to patients. The program’s core is a group of collaborative, multidisciplinary faculty mentors in engineering and the clinical neurosciences. In addition to dedicated neuroengineering research, our training program includes: (1) a longitudinal mentored clinical experience for PhD candidates, (2) engineering lab immersion and tutorial for MD postdoctoral fellows, (3) courses and seminars in Engineering, Neuroscience, Medicine and Statistics, (4) training in the proper conduct of research, (5) workshops on professional and career development, including scientific writing, oral presentations, and laboratory management, (6) new to the program will be a dedicated statistician and expert guest speakers leading intensive didactic seminars on quantitative tools and approaches, experimental design, and statistical methodology, and (7) all journal clubs, workshops and one-on-one mentoring will have time devoted to promoting quantitative literacy and thinking to address issues in research. The program, unique at Penn, leverages a superb research and training environment, including a compact campus where robust centers for Engineering, Medicine, Neuroscience and Statistics all reside within two blocks of each other, united through Penn’s Center for Neuroengineering and Therapeutics.