Immunology Research Training Grant

ABSTRACT Support is requested for four positions in a new training grant to continue and expand our successful Immunology Training Program at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). We have a total of 36 mentors that include junior, mid-level and senior training faculty comprising 14 women and 3 URM faculty. UCI immunology researchers are working on: a) host defense and vaccine development; b) tumor immunology and immunotherapy; c) Neurogenerative disease and microglia biology; d) chronic diseases and autoimmunity; and d) synthetic immunology. The pool of immunology graduate students comes primarily from the Cellular and Molecular Bology (CMB) intake program. In 2022, 101 students were accepted to CMB, including 39 URM (38.6%), and their mean GPA was 3.86 (which was similar to 2020 and 2021). There is substantial institutional support from the Office of Research and from the Graduate Division at UCI, which will provide full stipend and tuition for a 5th student. Our prior T32 from 2016-2021 supported 15 students, most of whom have graduated and are in research positions in industry or academia. Dr. Eric Pearlman is the Director of the UCI Institute for Immunology and was the Prinicipal Investigator of the previous T32 training grant. In the current submission, Dr. Pearlman will be PI/Director, and a new faculty recruit, Dr. Ivan Marazzi, will be co-Director. Dr. Pearlman has extensive experience in training graduate students and running T32 grants, and Dr. Marazzi has a very exciting and well funded research program in autoimmunity chronic neurodegenerative diseases and in molecular virology, including influenza and COVID-19. Given the outsanding training record of faculty and the quality of training grant elibile and URM students in the program, we fully anticipate that the UCI Immunology training program will continue to provide outstanding educational and career opportunities for the next generation of immunology researchers.