UCSF Dermatology Training Grant

Project Summary/Abstract The Dermatology Department at the University of California, San Francisco, has a long tradition of training promising young scientists to be successful, independent investigators. The UCSF Dermatology Training Program encourages physician scientist trainees to pursue cutting edge research in any laboratory at the university. This allows the trainees to choose from all the outstanding UC faculty, regardless of their departmental affiliation. With the continued and upcoming space expansion to the Mission Bay and Parnassus Campuses, UCSF has added a significant amount of research space, has recruited numerous new faculty members, and will continue to do so to take advantage of the new space being made available. The UCSF Dermatology Department has also expanded over the last 5 years in terms of research space and the number of faculty conducting basic and translational research. Building on our successes in the past, we propose to continue to support four postdoctoral trainees per year who are either physician-scientists or Ph.D. scientists. New changes to the training program include adopting additional methods for independent program evaluation, adding new training faculty as mentors, and developing a more detailed plan to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion. Ultimately, we hope to support trainees for a lifetime of scholarly pursuits with the goal of understanding the molecular and social determinants of skin diseases, identifying new therapies for these diseases, and ensuring that scientific discoveries lead to advances in public health in an equitable and cost- effective manner.