The graduate program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CMM) is recruiting clinical faculty to serve as clinical co-mentors for CMM graduate students.
Translational/pre-clinical research is an integral part of the CMM graduate training program. All CMM students are required to have dual mentors for both basic and clinical sciences as part of their thesis committee. In years 3 and 4, students take the course Bench to Bedside and Back (3Bs).
The goal of the 3Bs course is to expose and educate students about the clinical opportunities and translational implications associated with their thesis research, and to help discover the translational potential of their research in the design of pre-clinical models, clinical trials or collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry. The course will also demonstrate that data obtained from patient tissues and clinical correlates can help bring clinical research from the bedside back to the bench for continued improvement and refinement.
The role of the clinical co-mentor will be to provide advice and inform the student about opportunities in their department/subdivision for clinical exposure related to their thesis work. Because each disease or tumor type will have their own unique set of clinical meetings and opportunities, each student will work with their mentor and clinical co-mentor to design an individualized plan for a minimum of 12 hours of clinical research exposure per year. Clinical co-mentors will attend annual thesis committee meetings and will sign off when the student has met their 12 hour requirement.
The benefits of serving as a clinical co-mentor include the possibility of collaborations between bench scientists and clinical researchers, potential insight into new drugs and/or treatment regimens for clinical trials and opportunities for graduate teaching and mentorship for clinical faculty.
For more information on CMM, visit: http://cmm.jhmi.edu/
Contact: Cynthia Zahnow, 3Bs course director (zahnoci@jhmi.edu) or Rajini Rao, program director (rrao@jhmi.edu)
