Duke Center for HIV Structural Biology

Abstract The Developmental Core will offer a collaborative and nurturing environment for training and mentoring of early career investigators who are in the structural biology field. This Core will serve both Center-affiliated and non-Center affiliated investigators with an interest in HIV-1 structural biology. The development of trainees into successful and independent scientific professionals will be fostered through customized curricula, mentoring activities, access to state-of-the-art technologies through workshops and training programs conducted by the three Scientific Cores of the Center. The Developmental Core will benefit from the existing training and mentoring environments at the participating institutions. These include the Duke Human Vaccine Institute Training and Mentoring Program (DTMP), the Duke CFAR Developmental Core, the Vanderbilt Program in Computational Microbiology and Immunology, the University of Texas Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Graduate Programs, NIH T32 training programs and other such training and mentoring programs. Through close networking with existing programs in the different partner institutions, we will augment our training resources to expand the orbit of the trainees beyond their own institutions. The goals of the Developmental Core are to expand trainees’ knowledgebase and confidence through the use of customized curricula and technology, and offer seminars, journal clubs, short courses, mock study sections, and grant writing workshops. Training development activities of the Center will include methods-focused workshops designed to leverage the expertise and strengths of each Scientific Core to facilitate cross-training and skill development of students, postdoctoral fellows and early career scientists. The Developmental Core will work closely with the Projects and Scientific Cores to identify training and skill development opportunities, as well as new technologies that will augment the existing scientific resources of the Center. These interactions will drive the development of training resources within the Center, at the same time fostering collaborations between labs. Mentoring activities of the Center, led by the Developmental Core, will contribute to the training of the next generation of HIV researchers, and will generate a rich compilation of workshops and training modules that will be made publicly available to assist in the development of similar programs in the future.