Last Update: 10/19/2006 Printer Friendly Printer Friendly   Email This Page Email This Page  

Reproductive Scientist Development Program (RSDP)

RSDP LogoThe RSDP is a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research career development program for obstetrician-gynecologists in cell and/molecular biology and genetics and related fundamental sciences. Under the leadership of Dr. Robert Jaffe at the University of California, San Francisco, the RSDP is now in its 18th year. Collaborative funding from private sources is an integral and unique part of the program’s design. The program is sponsored jointly by the NICHD, four professional organizations, four pharmaceutical corporations and four research foundations.

Overall, this program has been an excellent example of a long-standing and productive government and private industry collaboration. In Phase I, Scholars spend two or three years in intensive basic science training at outstanding research laboratories around the country under the supervision of experienced and accomplished mentors. In Phase II, Scholars spend an additional three-year period establishing their research programs as junior faculty in a Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The goal of the program is to help academic obstetrics and gynecology departments to increase research and discovery in the reproductive sciences by educating obstetrician-gynecologists in contemporary basic science research to prepare them for research careers in academic medicine.

Since the RSDP began in July 1988, the program has trained 60 promising young obstetrician-gynecologist physician-scientists. Current Phase I RSDP Scholars are training at the following institutions: University of Utah, Harvard Medical School, University of Southwestern Medical School, and Yale University School of Medicine. Phase II Scholars reside at the Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Alabama, Birmingham, New York University School of Medicine, University of Iowa, University of California, San Francisco. This program uses the NIH Mentored Research Scientist Development Program Award (K12) mechanism.

For further information on the RSDP, please contact Dr. Estella Parrott. You can also visit http://cas.ucsf.edu/rsdp for more information.