Career Development for Environmental Health Investigators

A. Specific Aims The Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan's (CEHNM) Career Development Program will provide financial support, mentoring and training for a highly selective group of six junior faculty members, primarily physician-scientists, whose current research interests complement the Center's themes and disease focus areas. We seek to foster their development as independent investigators in environmental health science, while furthering the overall mission of the Center and the NIEHS. The CEHNM has an established tradition of recruiting and developing young faculty members and nurturing them to become independent investigators. The CEHNM is delighted with the opportunity afforded by the current P30 Center RFAto apportion $100,000/year of funding that is specifically targeted toward career development, with an emphasis on the development of physician-scientists who will conduct clinical and/or public health research programs. Mentoring relationships in an interdisciplinary environment are strained by or do not take place within an increasingly complex and competitive research arena confronted with pressing and large-scale health challenges. The successful transfer of knowledge and skills requires structure and monitoring in a carefully designed training program. A key element of our proposed Career Development Program is that it is structured around long-term, effective mentoring that provides a framework for the day-to-day integration of teaching and learning in an interdisciplinary environment. From beginning to end, the mentoring process will be guided by variety of relationships that will be formal, situational and informal.