Teaching/Outreach:
The mentoring component is strengthened by the extensive array of existing opportunities
at Washington University that reflect the multidisciplinary nature of this proposal.
Students from diverse Departments such as Physics, Engineering, Cell Physiology,
and Medicine receive training in the laboratory. The formal NIH-sponsored training
grants in which members of the C-TRAIN participate are numerous and all enable students
and postdoctoral fellows to pursue goals related to those of the C-TRAIN. In the
C-TRAIN environment, contact is facilitated by close collaboration between graduate
students, postdoctoral fellows, and clinical trainees. Thus, the flavor of both
science and medicine are captured in the program. For students and mentors alike,
interchange is promoted by the open architecture nature of the C-TRAIN space design,
and the presence of a number of small and medium size meeting spaces.
The teaching programs will be augmented with new course, seminars, workshops, and
student exchange possibilities with UIUC related to nanotechnology and focused on
cancer. A new PhD program in Imaging Sciences is being developed by the DBBS and
Medical School that will afford options for learning noninvasive methods for nanotechnology
quantification that will drive the field. The emergence of a business school program
in bio-entrepreneurship also will expose students to the fundamentals of the translational
process.
Collaboration with Industry has produced many new opportunities for learning and
transferring knowledge back into academic settings. Offsite preceptorships have
been undertaken for 1-3 months to work on various projects of mutual interest, resulting
in a substantial learning experience for the student. In the CAN we have even inverted the model and Industry colleagues (e.g., Dr Shelton Caruthers from Philips) teach
BME classes on campus. Our students gain the advantage of seeing what the “real
world” deems significant and how paradigms for progress differ considerably depending
on one’s frame of reference. We have found this experience to be of great practical
import to our students.