Interdisciplinary Training in Drug Abuse Research

Overview

The interdisciplinary training in Drug Abuse Research Program at the Icahn School of Medicine has flourished for more than two decades and has historically provided a rich and broad-based training experience in this discipline. Over the past five years, research in drug abuse has undergone a new rejuvenation and expansion at Mount Sinai. Recently, Mount Sinai recruited Dr. Lakshmi Devi (the current PI of this training grant) from NYU, Dr. Yasmin Hurd (co-PI of this training grant) from the Karolinska Institute and Dr. Eric Nestler, who joined Mount Sinai as the founding Director of the Brain Research Institute and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience. Recruitment of these world-renowned leaders in drug abuse research sets the stage for recruiting and training a new generation of scientists who can build the translational bridge between basic and clinical drug abuse research.

The training program has become interdepartmental and trans-disciplinary with training in both laboratory and clinical research. In addition, in order to encourage the interdisciplinary training, we now require all trainees to have primary and secondary preceptors. Thus we have designed our training program to provide a broader, more broad-based educational experience than is traditional, and to provide both basic and translational science training to both physicians and bench scientists. We have structured our training faculty to include scientists and physicians engaged in both basic science and translational research.

This training program is supported by grant number 5T32DA007135-27 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.