Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory Based Sciences

Understanding human health will be a focal priority for the programs that are funded. There is ample room for building on institutional strengths to achieve this focus, for example: institutional interests in chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, genetic diseases, toxicology and environmental exposures, reproductive health, and other areas where questions relating to human health are ripe for exploration at both the population and molecular scales. Likewise, institutional strengths in applied mathematics and modeling, statistics, genomics, bioinformatics and other informatics and data-driven sciences including geography and demographics, and phenomic approaches could provide excellent foundations for programs which encourage such work, as would strengths in population biology; epidemiology; human or disease ecology, anthropology, econometrics, and other population-focused quantitative fields.

Supported programs will train graduate students to the Ph.D. level, but programs may additionally propose giving training access to postdoctoral fellows, medical students, medical residents, masters students, undergraduates, or other kinds of trainees. Some examples of problems where such an approach would be beneficial include but are not limited to

• multifactorial disease processes
• evolution of and relationships between host, pathogen, vector, and reservoirs
• biomarker identification and validation
• effects of environmental exposure to toxins, allergens, and immunogens

Proposals 

• Degree-granting institutions in the U.S. or Canada may submit applications.
• Proposals must be driven by core components within medical and public health schools, but beyond those required components, departments or centers located within non-medical parts of a university, existing inter-institutional collaboratives, research museums, free-standing research institutes, and other non-profit institutions that provide advanced-level training are all acceptable as potential additional partners. Dental, osteopathic, and veterinary medical schools are appropriate applicants.
• Comparative medicine and animal science departments are advised to discuss their planned proposal with the program officer to ensure that their proposal will be human-focused enough to be competitive.
• Proposals that cross institutional boundaries are encouraged.
• Research groups working at national laboratories and within the federal government are allowable as partners, but funding to students doing research within these institutions must be channeled through an appropriate degree-granting institution.
• For-profit companies may not participate in the application, but could be valuable partners in such training programs. Proposals that may offer students access to research opportunities involving work in or data from the for-profit sector are welcome.