Institutional Career Development Core

The Einstein-Montefiore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) has developed and supported a highly integrated core of education and career development programs in clinical and translational research. In this new application, we describe our KL2 program, along with a range of synergistic and complementary career development award (CDA) programs. Along with a menu of didactic offerings, led by our flagship educational program, the MSc-granting Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP), these programs comprise a robust set of options to support the development of early-stage investigators. Our career development programs seek to accomplish the overarching goal: to identify, educate, support, and mentor talented clinical and non-clinical faculty and staff toward their development as impactful and successful clinical/translational scientists through working toward the following aims: 1) to build upon a robust foundation in clinical and translational research educational programs by developing new innovative programmatic initiatives, including methodologically-focused ‘tracks’ within our CRTP and novel applications of distance- and hybrid-learning technologies; 2) to promote team science competencies in our learners, while incentivizing and rewarding team science contributions in our institutional setting; 3) to effectively link research and health improvement through novel approaches to education and career development within a learning healthcare system, harmonizing scholarship and implementation and providing sustainable career pathways for clinician-investigators in research/healthcare teams; 4) to promote and support diversity in the clinical/translational research workforce. Our CTSA-funded CDA (KL2) program is coordinated with institutional and other, non-overlapping, extramural support, providing both leveraging and flexibility to maximize the impact of our efforts. KL2 Scholars are selected through a competitive study-section-type review process from among junior faculty at the Instructor or Assistant Professor level with sufficient background and experience to demonstrate their potential for a career in clinical or translational research. Each Scholar has an individually-tailored career development plan that is overseen by the Program Director, Dr. Paul Marantz. A special requirement of the program is that each applicant identify two mentors with appropriate and complementary experience and expertise, who also cross a “translational divide”. This new application builds on a 15-year track record of multidisciplinary career development efforts at Einstein-Montefiore, beginning in 2002 with an NCRR-funded K12 program. There have been 37 awardees over that time period, excluding the current Scholars. All 37 K Awardees have published since they received the KL2 grant. 95% have at least one first authored publication and 84% have been a senior author on at least one publication. 24 of the 37 awardees have gone on to obtain additional funding, receiving 52 grants in all. The new and expanded approach presented in this application will provide opportunities to a broader range of Scholars who can succeed in an increasingly competitive environment.