UAB Professor Receives $650,000 to Help Change Graduate Student Training

BIRMINGHAM, AL — A UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) professor has received a prestigious $650,000 award as part of a $10 million effort by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to change how graduate schools train their students and quicken the translation of basic science discoveries into new medical treatments.

Feb. 15, 2006

 

BIRMINGHAM, AL — A UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) professor has received a prestigious $650,000 award as part of a $10 million effort by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to change how graduate schools train their students and quicken the translation of basic science discoveries into new medical treatments.

Thomas Clemens, Ph.D., professor and director of the UAB Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, is principal investigator and director of the new graduate education program at UAB. Etty Benveniste, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Cell Biology is co-director. UAB was one of 13 applications funded. This program will involve UAB Schools of Medicine, Public Health and Health Related Professions as well Southern Research Institute. Others receiving awards include Harvard, Yale and Stanford universities, and the University of North Carolina. UAB is the only recipient institution located in the Deep South.

Clemens, who is professor and director of UAB’s Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, said that the emergence of new molecular techniques and the sequencing of the human genome have provided significant opportunities to solve long-standing disease-related problems. “However, the decrease in the numbers of physician-scientists and a deficiency of Ph.D. graduates who understand disease processes has created a gap in the workforce required to translate these discoveries for use in clinical practice,” he said.

He envisions a new pathway of graduate education that would include the pairing of postgraduate fellows with mentors conducting cutting-edge disease-based research who will guide their training. The new curriculum would provide exposure to patient-oriented case-based topics, vocabulary in clinical research, and an understanding of drug discovery, he said.

The HHMI President Thomas R. Cech, said the new program encourages graduate schools to integrate medical knowledge into their Ph.D. training. “At a time when science and medicine must work hand in hand to solve problems of human health and disease, we want to help change graduate education to increase the pool of scientists who are doing medically oriented research,” Cech said.

Other institutions receiving funding from $400,000 to $1 million are Baylor College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rice University, University of California at Davis, University of California School of Medicine in San Diego, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the University of Washington.

For more information on the HHMI program, go to www.hhmi.org/news/20060215.html.