Chemical Biology Training Program

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The Chemical Biology Training Program (CBTP) is a new interdisciplinary predoctoral training program at the University of California at Berkeley. The CBTP will be the only training program at UC Berkeley focusing on chemistry-driven approaches to biomedical research. The CBTP will recruit and appoint 12 trainees per year to train in the field of chemical biology, drawn from a pool of 1378 applicants and 117 matriculants per year in the Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology PhD programs. Trainees will be appointed for one-year terms and will continue to engage with the CBTP training activities and career-building events through to graduation. We expect that 100% of our students will graduate with a PhD within 6 years, with a target mean time to degree of 5.5 years. Our goal is that every student will publish a first or co-first author paper in a peer-reviewed journal recognized as excellent in the field of chemical biology, and will subsequently pursue a research-related career in academia, industry, or government. Professional development will be centered on the acquisition of six core competences designed to enable leadership in any of these workforce sectors. Training procedures will be informed by the latest scientific literature in the field of research mentorship and training, and will emphasize the acquisition of self-efficacy. Research training will be enhanced in response to the latest advances in chemical biology, including the rapidly growing importance of translational chemical biology to drug development. A series of training innovations have been incorporated into the CBTP, including the establishment of academic-industrial partnerships, the creation of a new academic unit focused on Molecular Therapeutics, and a structured mentoring environment with student peer mentoring groups and secondary faculty advocates. The effectiveness of the training program will be rigorously evaluated on an annual basis and advice sought from newly-constituted student and external advisory groups. Our 45 CBTP training faculty are drawn from 9 different departments at UC Berkeley, and our trainees will be drawn from the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology PhD programs. Our faculty are world leaders in their fields and include 10 members of the National Academy of Sciences and recipients of the Nobel and Wolf Prizes in Chemistry. All CBTP faculty undergo formal mentorship training and evaluation of mentoring quality.