CTSA Predoctoral T32 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

Our mission is to build and optimize a predoctoral Translational Science Training (TST) Program to help Trainees overcome rate-limiting steps and to accelerate the science of translation. We aim to provide Trainees with a program to help them develop the skills in team science, innovation, and scientific rigor necessary for a successful career in Translational Science (TS). Research education and research training in TS will sustain development of a highly skilled workforce that efficiently advances patient-focused preclinical, clinical, clinical implementation, and public health research. The predoctoral TST Program, which started in 2018, has been highly successful in training a TS workforce. In partnership with TS Mentors, we implemented a highly responsive, customized program that has produced a cadre of well-trained early-career translational scientists. All our TST Program graduates are active in biomedical research or continued training, and many of them have secured positions in academia or industry. These outcomes reflect our optimized selection process, programmatic emphasis on excellence in TS, and Trainee acquisition of skills for successful career development. Our TST Trainees learn to respond, interact, facilitate change, and conduct research within and among varied organizational structures and cultures. They also acquire knowledge about TS research concepts and the value of their research along the TS spectrum. Our record of Trainee recruitment, together with the high achievements of our TST Trainees, provide a solid foundation on which we will extend and expand the TST Program. The present proposal seeks to continue this research training program to include support for 6 predoctoral Trainees/year in a 2-year program that provides a formal, graduate level TS Certificate Program. The proposed TST Program offers TS training for predoctoral early-career investigators with the Institute for Integration of Medicine and Science (IIMS)—home for our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)—at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI). Candidates will be recruited from all departments, institutes, and centers at UTHSCSA and its IIMS CTSA Partners (UT Austin, UTSA, and TBRI), and from clinical research training programs in the UTHSCSA schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, and health professions. Collectively, Trainees from these predoctoral programs will continue to create unique networking and learning opportunities among peers from different disciplines and research interests.