Rutgers Training in Addiction Research Program

Project Summary/Abstract The over-arching goal of the current program is to unify the training in substance use disorder research at Rutgers Piscataway/New Brunswick encompassing the existing strengths in basic and human imaging research. The result is the Rutgers Training Program in Addiction Research (TARP), which aims to recruit a diverse group of outstanding predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers and provide them with rigorous and comprehensive training in interdisciplinary addiction-focused research. The goal is for all trainees to gain an appreciation of addiction neuroscience research from cells to circuits to behavior. Our faculty members represent an extraordinary range of addiction research expertise, from epigenetics to human imaging. The thirteen participating mentors, who together hold over $10 million dollars in annual active research support, have decades of collective experience training dozens of students and fellows who have gone on to successful careers in academia, industry and government. More senior program mentors include Drs. Gary Aston-Jones, Danielle Dick, Zhiping Pang and David Zald. The program director, Dr. Chris Pierce, initiated and co-directed a NIDA-funded translational addiction training program (pre- and postdocs) for over nine years at the University of Pennsylvania before he moved to Rutgers in early 2020. The proposed predoctoral and postdoctoral training programs are integrated through events, programs and courses designed to foster interactions among trainees as well as the Rutgers addiction research community as a whole. These joint activities satisfy many of the goals of the program including practice communicating research findings, instruction in contemporary addiction neuroscience research, grant writing, critiquing the addiction neuroscience research literature, networking, leadership, career development, etc. All training activities also emphasize ethical conduct of research and the importance of scientific rigor and reproducibility. Although the research and didactic aspects of the Rutgers TARP are neuroscience focused (basic science and human imaging) we also strive to give our trainees a better understanding of the totality of the field including the challenges associated with developing treatments for substance use disorders. Our over-arching goal is to better equip the next generation of addiction neuroscience researchers to apply novel and innovative approaches to develop new therapies, which are needed now perhaps more than ever.