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November 24, 2008
New Ph.D. path links lab and population sciences

By Holly Korschun

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) has selected Emory for a $2.5 million, five-year award aimed at training new biomedical scientists whose expertise in research and teaching will bridge laboratory and population sciences.

The Emory program is one of three new BWF programs funded nationally within the Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory Based Sciences.

The training awards, focused on understanding and improving human health, were created to connect population and computational sciences with laboratory-based biological sciences. The goal is to establish training programs that partner researchers in schools of medicine with those in schools of public health, as well as with a diverse range of other partners.

Emory’s program, housed within the Graduate School, will create a new doctoral pathway called Human Health: Molecules to Mankind (M2M), with the theme of “Understanding human health: integrating biology, behaviors, environments and populations.” Each doctoral student will train within two existing Ph.D. programs, one in a laboratory science and one in a population science.

Kenneth Brigham, director of the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute, will direct the M2M program with Michele Marcus, director of graduate studies and professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health.

“The M2M program will create a bridge between these two areas of laboratory and population sciences, with the goal of creating a new kind of biomedical scientist,” says Brigham. “With Emory’s emphasis on cross-disciplinary education and research, and with a strategic plan that includes predictive health, global health, and computational and life sciences, our university is ideally positioned to become fully engaged in this pioneering program with our students and faculty.”

Students will enroll in the Emory Graduate School and will align with existing Ph.D. programs or with a new proposed Ph.D. program in predictive health in Emory School of Medicine and the Rollins School of Public Health. Emory College of Arts and Sciences will be a key participant, along with collaborators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Georgia Institute of Technology. A collaboration with the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute also involves the Morehouse School of Medicine, Kaiser Permanente of Georgia and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

“The M2M program brings together faculty and resources from many areas to train a new generation of scientists who can approach biomedical research with a new level of comprehensive and interconnected skill and expertise,” says Graduate School Dean Lisa A. Tedesco. “It is an excellent example of reconfiguring graduate education to address difficult problems at a new level, and we are pleased to be a part of it.”

Emory and partner institutions will provide an extensive background of related research projects, partnerships, and research and educational infrastructure that will enrich the new M2M training program.
The program initially will include four tracks: Predictive Health; Population Processes and Dynamics of Infectious Diseases; Biomarkers and the Development of Acute and Chronic Diseases; and Public Health Genomics: Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Health.

The M2M program also will offer an elective global science experience through the Emory Global Health Institute, the CDC and existing Emory collaborative programs in a variety of countries.