The joint program, in addition to acknowledging the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving health care problems, is further evidence of the collaborative spirit shared by the two universities.
"MD/PhD programs are not novel in the sense of students earning dual degrees," said Ajit P. Yoganathan, co-director of the Bioengineering Center and Emory-Georgia Tech Biomedical Technology Center. "The novelty in this case is that there are two separate institutions involved-one public and one private."
Since the mid-1970s Georgia Tech and Emory have maintained a grass roots collaborative relationship, with researchers combining medical and engineering expertise to produce innovations such as magnetic IUDs and laser therapy for arteriosclerosis.
"Emory has one of the strongest MD/PhD programs with partial support from a Medical Scientist Training Program grant from the National Institutes of Health, and Georgia Tech has a strong new bioengineering PhD program. When outstanding students in the MD/PhD program wanted the bioengineering PhD, we jumped at the opportunity to forge this strong alliance," said Robert B. Gunn, director of the Emory MD/PhD program.
In 1986 the universities signed a broad formal agreement to establish a collaborative research program by funding seed grants between the two institutions. A second component of that original agreement is to look at educational programs, and a third component is fund-raising. The formal MD/PhD program falls under the second component. The PhD in bioengineering was approved by the Board of Regents last fall.
Students in the seven-year program will spend the first two years at the School of Medicine doing pre-clinical work. Then they attend Georgia Tech for three years to complete their PhD before returning to Emory for the final two years of medical school.
"We already have two MD/PhD students who began pursuing their doctorates at Georgia Tech in fall of 1994," said Yoganathan. Another student began medical school at Emory this summer, and in two years will come to Tech to pursue his PhD.
"These are the `cream of the crop' students who are interested in going into medical research," said Yoganthan. "Traditionally, they have gotten a PhD in one of the basic biological sciences. With this new program, the students can come to Georgia Tech and get a PhD in bioengineering."