Clinical Neuroscience Research Training Program in Psychiatry

SUMMARY This training program, now in its 27th year, is designed to meet the urgent national priority of increasing the number of highly trained psychiatric physician-scientists conducting clinical and translational patient-oriented research in mental health. In order to be effective independent investigators, psychiatric physician-scientists must be fully trained in both clinical neuroscience and modern clinical-translational research methodologies. The ever-increasing complexity of the science and methods requires that individuals receive specialized training in order to take full advantage of the rapid advances occurring in the field. This 2-3 year program will utilize a curriculum designed to give trainees mastery of the fundamentals of molecular and cellular neurobiology, neuropharmacology, neuroimaging, psychiatric genetics, computational methods, and the responsible conduct of research in human subjects. Trainees will benefit from individualized mentorship by members of a large and multidisciplinary group of research training faculty within the Department of Psychiatry. The rich training environment is supported by robustly funded research programs and infrastructure within and associated with the Department of Psychiatry. These include: 1) the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit, 2) the National Center Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 3) the Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism, 4) the Yale Stress Center, 5) the VA-Connecticut research community and the Neurobiological Studies Unit, 6) the Wu-Tsai Institute for the study of human cognition; 7) the Yale PET Center, 8) the Magnetic Resonance Research Center, 9) the Program in Human Psychiatric Genetics, 10) the Interventional Psychiatry Service, 11) the Division of Neurocognition, Neurocomputation, and Neurogenetics, 12) the Yale Program for Psychedelic Science, and others. Trainees will conduct research in specialized inpatient and outpatient research facilities and specialty clinics, in collaboration with basic, translational, and clinical research resources within and beyond the department. They also form a large cohort of research trainees, providing community and mutual support as they navigate the challenging transition to independent careers as physician-scientists. The Yale Department of Psychiatry has an exceptional training record of producing nationally and internationally prominent physician-scientist researchers in psychiatry over six decades. The renewal of this highly successful T32 training program will allow us to continue our highly impactful work, increasing the number of superbly trained patient-oriented physician-scientist research psychiatrists entering the national workforce, and thereby driving the pace of innovation that our field so badly needs.