THIS WEEK IN

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Careers at the
National Institutes
of Health BY PETER GWYNNE
Training Programs for Young Scientists
The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Intramural Training and
Education provides a range of opportunities for individuals to learn the
nature of the biomedical research profession.
dr. michael m.
gottesman
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a worldwide reputation for conducting
and funding research related to biomedicine. But the organization has
another significant role: training young people who want to make their careers
in science. “Our focus is on the training, which is basically related to teaching
people how to conduct scientific research,” says Michael M. Gottesman,
Deputy Director for Intramural Research. “We have tried to develop fairly seamless
pathways for training, starting at the high school level, going all the way
to postdoctoral research, and then on to transitional or bridge training as people
go on from training programs to scientific positions.” Adds Joan P. Schwartz, assistant director
of the Office of Intramural Research and acting deputy director of the Office of Intramural Training
and Education: “The goal is to provide training at various levels of entry into science.”
That training consists of several separate programs, each with their own objectives. For example,
the training can provide a route into the research lab for women and members of disadvantaged
populations who have faced extreme difficulties becoming scientists in the past. “The
idea is to give an opportunity to be involved in and contribute to research to people who may
not otherwise have that opportunity,” explains Alfred C. Johnson, director of the NIH’s
Undergraduate Scholarship Program and its Loan Repayment Programs. According to Mary J.
DeLong, director of the NIH Graduate Partnerships Program, the home of graduate students in
NIH laboratories, “Students and university faculty in research collaborations gain access to the
incredible research resources of the NIH, with a potential for faculty to expand into new areas
of research.” In addition, says Frederick P. Ognibene, director of the NIH Clinical Research
Training Program: “We want to get people engaged in careers in clinical research.”
dr. joan p.
schwartz
Career Development The programs have a
marked effect on trainees’ career development.
“Just being at the NIH is a remarkable experience,”
Schwartz says. “There is nowhere else you can work
where you have the opportunity to see what is happening
and have collaboration possibilities.”
DeLong extends that thought. “Graduate training
at NIH gives students the training experience that
can serve as a model for the future collaborative and interdisciplinary
research careers that are rapidly becoming the norm,” she explains.
“There is also the broad network of colleagues established during the
students’ training that is required for success in the science world.”
The training can also give emerging scientists a direct entrée to careers
within NIH. For trainees, Gottesman says, “The world is their oyster. So is
NIH. We have 1,200 principal investigators and a fair amount of turnover.
So we have about 30 tenure track positions open per year on average.”
National Institutes of Health
http://www.nih.gov
NIH Office of Intramural Training
and Education
http://www.training.nih.gov
NIH Clinical Research Training Program
http://www.training.nih.gov/crtp/index.asp
NIH Graduate Partnerships Program
http://gpp.nih.gov
NIH Loan Repayment Programs
http://www.lrp.nih.gov
NIH Research and Training Opportunities
http://www.training.nih.gov
NIH Undergraduate Scholarship Program
http://ugsp.info.nih.gov
The programs provide an obvious benefit
to the organization. “Students bring a
new ‘energy’ and dimension to research
teams at NIH,” DeLong says. “Our idea,”
Ognibene adds, “is to enhance the pipeline
of clinical researchers.” Schwartz points out
the value of the programs to the United
States, whose taxpayers have doubled government
support for NIH during the past
decade. “We will get a better educated, more eager, and hopefully
more diverse scientific work force,” she says.
NIH’s 21 individual institutes and centers run the training programs
and pay trainees’ expenses. However, the Office of Intramural Training
and Education has the responsibility of overseeing the targeted programs
and placing trainees in them. Several of the programs run throughout the
year, while others focus on summer training. Within the course of a single
year, NIH’s institutes and centers host more than 5,000 trainees at
different levels of training and from a variety of locations, including high
schools from across the United States and American and overseas universities.
The organization also awards scholarships for undergraduates to
study science at accredited four-year universities.
General to Particular The programs run the gamut from the
general to the specific. They range from giving teenagers a diversity of
scientific experiences that they can’t obtain in their
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