REC Core

REC Summary The Research Education Component (REC) of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) provides critically needed training for junior faculty, senior postdoctoral fellows, and clinical research track residents and fellows, to conduct research on Alzheimer’s disease-related disorders (ADRD). REC supports mentored research experiences for junior investigators during two vulnerable periods of their career development, early in their careers as they approach the end of residency or fellowship training, when they are too junior to obtain career development awards, or later when they have completed a career development award (e.g. K award), or have a junior faculty position, but have yet to obtain RO1 or equivalent grant funding. Through the participation of distinguished senior faculty mentors in an intellectually and technologically rich academic environment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), REC also provides a mechanism to support gifted and highly motivated junior investigators who are new to AD research. Complementing state- of-the-art research training with teams of multidisciplinary REC mentors, REC scholars will receive an individually tailored curriculum and exposure to multiple career-building activities, including a work-in- progress seminar series, science communication course, translational neuroscience and AD seminar series, grant and publication writing workshops and course, an academic survival and leadership seminar series, optional advanced coursework in neuroscience, genetics/genomics, and quantitative analyses, and a variety of additional resources available at ISMMS. REC scholars, moreover, will take advantage of well-designed, accessible ADRC cores which will assist in their training allowing timely completion of their research program milestones and assisting scholars to meet goals set in their individual development plans (IDPs). REC objectives include: (1) To identify and recruit four trainees per year to conduct research to test questions and mechanisms important to the health of ADRD patients; (2) To support REC scholars, provide multidisciplinary mentorship, assist trainees to develop novel, cutting-edge research projects relevant to ADRD, and provide them with individualized training and education needed to conduct high quality, ethical, and multidisciplinary research on ADRD disorders; (3) To provide multiple forums that will encourage development of trainee presentation and writing skills, and assist trainees to submit and obtain external grant funding that is appropriate for their career stage, to sustain long-term academic careers as independent investigators and future leaders in the basic, translational, and clinical research of ADRDs; (4) REC leadership, mentoring teams, and of course REC scholars themselves, will work together to assess short- and long-term trainee progress, outcomes, and career development, providing critical metrics to evaluate effectiveness of training and guide future programmatic improvement.