ROC StARR: Health and Immune Function Across the Lifespan

Physician-scientists bring a unique perspective to biomedical research, informing clinically inspired basic science questions (bedside-to-bench), translating fundamental research back to the clinic (bench-to-bedside), and guiding implementation science on behalf of public health (translation to the community). On the other hand, there are numerous challenges contributing to the declining number of physician-scientists, including individual (financial debt, length of time for training, balance of clinical productivity and protected time for increasingly competitive funding), institutional, and national factors. Robust research programs during residency can catalyze the development of physician-scientists poised to ask fundamental questions informed by clinical insights which will be crucial for advancing discovery in NIAID mission-critical immune mediated diseases in the coming decades. The University of Rochester (UR) has a long history of support for trainees along the physician-scientist continuum, with a medical scientist training program in its 50th year, Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) in Internal Medicine (IM), and well-established research tracks in the participating residency programs (Medicine, Pediatric, Med-Peds, and Dermatology). The primary goal of this multidisciplinary ROChester Stimulating Access to Research during Residency (ROC StARR) Health and Immune Function Across the Lifespan R38 is to train a diverse pool of next-generation physician-scientists to lead the development, implementation, and evaluation of new clinical modalities to diagnose, treat and prevent autoimmune, allergic, inflammatory, and infectious diseases across the age spectrum from infants to older children to adults to the aging population via the following Aims: 1) recruit an exceptional, diverse pool of Medicine, Pediatric, and Dermatology Residents and provide them with high quality, rigorous training in 3 defined pillars of translational, clinical, and health equity research through comprehensive didactics and team science initiatives, 2) provide 1-2 years of mentored research with the support of a multidisciplinary physician- scientist focused mentorship team uniquely suited to instill in our trainees the in-depth knowledge and skills needed to conduct cutting-edge research in autoimmune, allergic, and infectious diseases with high clinical impact, 3) develop individualized career development plans and an infrastructure to foster the physician- scientist trajectory from resident to fellow to faculty with the goal of expanding the number and diversity of well- trained residents performing research in immune-mediated diseases, and 4) perform robust evaluation and tracking to demonstrate the impact of the StARR. ROC StARR will be led by PDs Jennifer Anolik, MD, PhD (Medicine) and Kirsi Järvinen-Seppo, MD, PhD (Pediatrics) who have a longstanding history of clinical, education and research collaboration and have strategically assembled a team of 35 multi-disciplinary physician-scientist faculty preceptors to support two to four Resident-Investigators each year with thematic emphasis on immune responses during development, aging, and disease.