The technology development team for the Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics (seated clockwise: Gila Budescu, D.Sc., Ph.D., Jim Phillips, Ph.D., Kirby Vandivort, M.S., and Robert Brunner, Ph.D.; Klaus Schulten, Ph.D., stands at the screen) is pictured at work in a software development meeting. The goal was to develop software that permits scientists to share views of molecular models in real time over the Internet—facilitating the true team science that NCRR seeks to support. For example, a researcher in Boston might prepare a perspective on a protein’s active site to highlight the protein’s function and mechanism. With this software, the image could be shared with colleagues anywhere in the world. Here, the development team discusses image quality and how to make the software user friendly. (Photo Credit: John Stone, provided courtesy of the NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
NCRR offers training and mentoring programs that benefit researchers, clinicians, veterinary scientists, and a range of disciplines needed to move basic research to clinical practice. For example, through the CTSA program, NCRR is supporting advanced degrees in clinical and translational science. BTRRs offer training in specialized technologies. The RCMI program, in collaboration with seven other NIH ICs, supports curriculum-dependent programs in minority institutions to train investigators in clinical and translational research leading to a master of science degree in clinical research or a master of public health degree in a clinically relevant area. COBRE and INBRE support and stimulate the development of a pipeline for the next generation of biomedical researchers and health professionals at all levels. Such investments contribute to the workforce development in IDeA states. Within comparative medicine, several programs are addressing the need for veterinarians in research. Many of these programs are designed to address a shortfall of well-trained scientists to support a broad range of research. In addition, NCRR supports science education for the general public and students to enhance their understanding of health issues and career opportunities.
Clinical and translational science is only effective if multiple disciplines come together to solve complex biomedical problems. Therefore, training programs for multidisciplinary teams are needed that will expose them to clinical research design, epidemiology, biostatistics, pharmacology, biomedical informatics, ethics, behavioral science, engineering, law, and health economics.
Action Item: NCRR will encourage investigators from diverse disciplines, including medicine, pediatrics, surgery, dentistry, nursing, engineering, veterinary medicine, and pharmacology, to train in multidisciplinary settings so they can participate as members of an integrated research team.
Mr. Edem Blavo (left) and Mr. Ifedapo Adeniyi, students at Clark Atlanta University, presented their research at a poster session at a National Symposium on Prostate Cancer. The symposium is hosted by the RCMI-supported Center for Cancer Research and Therapeutic Development (CCRTD). Because many investigators at RCMI institutions, including CCRTD, study diseases that disproportionately affect minorities, the program serves the dual purpose of bringing more minority scientists into mainstream research and enhancing studies on minority health. (Photo Credit: Curtis McDowell, Clark Atlanta University)
To ensure that there will be a next generation of clinical and translational scientists, new training opportunities and approaches need to be available to young investigators. These opportunities need to be linked to core competencies and to opportunities for gaining advanced degrees. Taken together, these steps could evolve into national standards to define the discipline of clinical and translational science.
Discussions of pipeline issues often focus on graduate and professional schools, when efforts should begin far earlier. One of the main missions of the IDeA program’s INBRE initiative is to support the student pipeline through outreach to faculty and students in undergraduate institutions, tribal colleges, community colleges, and high schools. These programs also encourage and support students from diverse populations.
Effective mentoring is a key requirement for the education of researchers and plays a central role in passing on the skills needed to translate findings from the clinic into diverse and complex community settings. Mentoring also can help build additional skills and talent among researchers who are working in areas that face the challenges of rural and sparse populations.
Action Items: NCRR will:
Investigators at BTRRs create critical, unique technologies and methods and apply them to a broad range of basic, translational, and clinical research. This approach is accomplished through a synergistic interaction of technical and biomedical expertise, both within the resources and through intensive collaborations with other leading laboratories.
BTRRs serve a unique purpose in the broad context of NIH-funded research. They represent a critical mass of technological and intellectual resources with a strong focus on service and training for investigators as well as dissemination of technologies, methods, and software. Their goal is to promote the widespread and routine application of the cutting-edge technologies they develop across the full spectrum of research.
Action Items: Through the BTRR program, NCRR will:
Veterinarians play a critical and unique role in government, academia, and industrial organizations engaged in biomedical research. In particular, the One Medicine–One Health concept offers opportunities to encourage partnerships between human and veterinary medicine. There are considerable challenges in identifying, recruiting, training, and retaining veterinarians who can fill these research roles. With biomedical research priorities shifting from basic molecular and cellular research to translational research, the importance of animal models and, therefore, veterinarians skilled in comparative medicine has increased.
Action Item: NCRR will address the growing need for research-trained veterinarians by sponsoring career development programs that attract and train graduate veterinarians in such specialties as primate clinical medicine, laboratory animal medicine, or rodent pathology.
A fourth-grade student is examining a plastic replica of a human brain as she takes part in a class with a special speaker, neuroscientist Eric Chudler, Ph.D., of the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Chudler studies the brain and Parkinson’s disease, and with a SEPA from NCRR, he is exploiting the potential of the Internet to deliver science education materials directly to classrooms, media centers, libraries, and homes. Since 1991, NCRR has used its SEPA program to fund innovative science education to improve understanding of health and biomedical research by supporting projects that increase the scientific literacy of children, young adults, and the public at large. SEPA projects, both K–12 and science center and museum based, have been implemented in more than 30 states, Puerto Rico, and more than a dozen American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian (AI/AN/NH) communities, and they reach tens of thousands of people every year. (Photo Credit: Doug Ramsay/Snohomish County Tribune)
The two major goals of the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program are to 1) increase the pipeline of future scientists and clinicians, especially from minority, underserved, and rural K–12 students, and 2) to engage and educate the general public on the health-related advances made possible by NIH-funded research. By creating relationships among educators, museum curators, and medical researchers, SEPA encourages the development of hands-on, inquiry-based curricula that inform participants about such timely issues as obesity, stem cells, and infectious diseases. In addition, SEPA provides professional development for teachers and mentoring opportunities for students.
Action Items: NCRR will: