Director: George O’Toole, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
The primary objective of the Dartmouth CF Research Training Core is to recruit and train pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows so that they are well-prepared to become independent, funded investigators studying cystic fibrosis. A hallmark of our program is the close and consistent interaction of our faculty with our trainees via numerous Research Development Program (RDP)-sponsored activities, including weekly research meetings, courses, journal clubs and our annual retreat. The training activities at Dartmouth are enhanced by funds from an NIH-funded training award focused on CF, and the successes of our trainees in competing for individual fellowship support. The training that our students and fellows receive through Training Core activities, in the context of basic and translational science in CF and from a multidisciplinary team of researchers, provides an extraordinary foundation for wide-ranging future work in CF that will impact the next generation of CF-relevant therapeutic development and our basic understanding of disease processes.
An example of the many activities available to our trainees are listed here:
- DartCF Research Seminar Series
- Dartmouth CF Retreat with speakers from industry, universities and clinical context from around New England, as well as internationally recognized keynote speakers.
- Journal Club
- Support for Off-Campus Courses including the NIH/R25-supported course “Reproducible and FAIR Bioinformatics Analysis of Omics Data” offered each summer at MDIBL.
- Departmental Seminar Series in Microbiology/Immunology, Molecular Systems Biology, Biochemistry and Cell Biology, and others.
- Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Training. Including a variety of courses and the weekly DartCF-sponsored R Club.
- Courses: “CF: Bench to Bedside, and Back Again” and “Bugs and Thugs”
- Support to attend meetings
- Professional Development: Communicating Science. Including Science Cafés and “Communicating Science” course.
- Professional Development: Annual Rigor and Reproducibility Training
- Professional Development: Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning.
- Professional Development: Postdoc Research Group organized by two DartCF postdoctoral trainees.
- Professional Development: Career Development Activities. Our Guarini Graduate School recently launched a for-credit Professional Development Module. This program is open to all PhD students, and focuses on four areas: (i) Core Competencies, including ethics, writing, communication, mentorship and leadership, (ii) Research Skills, including lab management, grant writing, patents, (iii) Teaching Skills, including DCAL workshops, TA workshop, teaching statements and syllabus design, and (iv) Career Exploration, including myIDP, academic/non-academic job searching, alumni career panels, CV’s and resumes, and industry externships. Students completing 35 hrs of development workshops over their PhD earn 1 graduate credit.
- Professional Development: PIs-in-Training Group.
- Professional Development: T32-funded Dartmouth CF Training Program with enhanced activities for graduate student trainees.