Program - Institute for Clinical Research Education - University of ...

Master of Science and Certificate
Programs in Clinical and Translational Science
Program Leadership:
Mark Roberts, MD, MPP, Director
Cindy Bryce, PhD, Associate Director
Jennifer Kush, Program Coordinator
Jessica Dornin, Student Services Coordinator
Initially funded in 1999 under the K30 mechanism of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the program leading to a
Master of Science (MS) in Clinical Research has become a national model for programs to educate clinical trainees at
multiple levels, including medical students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty.
The MS curriculum provides a basic set of knowledge and skills that every clinical investigator needs, regardless of
the specific field in which he or she conducts patient-oriented research. The basics include clinical research methods,
biostatistics, measurement of outcomes, and ethical and regulatory principles regarding human research. The core
curriculum serves as the central didactic experience for a variety of ICRE training programs and consists of a tightly
integrated series of courses focusing on topics, problems, and skills acquisition across the various content areas.
The summer coursework is followed by a course in grant writing. This course is required for the MS and builds on
information that is provided through two seminar series: the Research Design and Development Series and the Ethics
and Regulation of Clinical Research Series. In these seminar series, students learn how to develop a research question
into an NIH-style grant proposal, how to identify and deal with potential problems related to the protection of human
subjects, and how to prepare a protocol for the Institutional Review Board. The final product is a completed grant
application that follows the PHS-398 application format.
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