Research Training in Visual Sciences

Project Summary/Abstract This is a resubmission of a competing renewal application of the Visual Sciences Training (VST) Grant from Baylor College of Medicine (BCM, T32 EY007001) which was first awarded by the National Institutes of Health in 1975. Since that time, this program has trained 72 predoctoral students and 88 postdoctoral fellows, and many of them have become leaders in vision and ophthalmic research. Trainees trained during the last 5 years have published 45 papers. The VST program has 21 preceptors from 8 departments and 8 graduate PhD programs in BCM, carrying 15 active qualifying (+ 2X NCE) R01 grants supported from the National Eye Institute and 36 grants from other federal research agencies or foundations. The Program is directed by Samuel M. Wu, PhD, who has been a preceptor on this training grant for 38 years, and has been the Principal Investigator and Program Director since 1994. Dr. Wu is assisted by a training Grant coordinator, Jessica Nollkamper, and three committees, the Steering Committee, Recruitment/Admissions Committee and Academic Progress Committee. The objective of this training program is to train competent basic and translational vision researchers, and to equip them with cutting edge scientific ideas and techniques to face scientific and medical challenges of the 21st century. Trainees are required to take a number of didactic vision, neuroscience, genetics and ethics courses, and expected to acquire comprehensive knowledge of the entire visual system and the associated diseases, and to learn state-of-the-art experimental techniques. Additionally, a trainee will be guided by his/her preceptors (and other members of the program) into at least one specialized area of the visual system, one research discipline and one disease in great depth, so that he/she can initiate an independent research project after training.