Burroughs Wellcome Fund Award
Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory Based
Sciences
Emory was recently selected as one of just three programs in the country from a proposal pool of 61. The Fund’s selection was based on the quality, innovation, and logic of the proposed training program and its relevance to the goals of this award program.
Human Health: Molecules to Mankind (M2M) will be a new Emory University Graduate School doctoral pathway with the theme, “Understanding human health: integrating biology, behaviors, environments, and populations”. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) are key collaborators along with Emory's Rollins School of Public Health and the School of Medicine. The Emory Graduate School is the school of enrollment for all doctoral study. M2M students and faculty will comprise a distinct interdisciplinary group. Breadth and depth in laboratory and population sciences, a culture of interdisciplinarity, and a strong history of trans-institutional educational programs are special strengths of the Emory environment.
The M2M pathway is a distinct pathway that involves two existing PhD programs for each student, one in a laboratory science and one in a population science. M2M students are admitted to one of the programs and then choose a second mentor in the other program. M2M will be the integrator responsible for creating a bridge between these areas of science and enabling the traffic across that bridge that will create a new kind of biomedical scientist.
There are four areas of concentration:
Predictive Health (Drs.
Ken Brigham, School of Medicine and Michelle Lampl, Emory
College Department of Anthropology)
Predictive Health and Society will focus on defining health as a positive
state, integrating biology, behavior and environment in the definition,
discovering/inventing new ways to measure and predict health that
utilize cutting edge science and technology, identifying processes
that can be influenced by interventions intended to maintain the healthy
state, and developing strategies and tactics for translating this new
knowledge to individuals and populations.
The Epidemiology and Within Host Population and Evolutionary
Dynamics of Infectious Diseases and the Immune Response (Drs.
Bruce Levin, Emory College Department of Biology and David Stephens, School
of Medicine, Infectious Diseases)
By definition, the epidemiology (the between-host dynamics) of
infectious diseases are population processes; concern is with the
rates of infection, the host and other factors contributing to the
dissemination of pathogens or parasites, and the contribution of
vaccine other interventions to controlling and limiting the magnitude
and effects of emerging, endemic and epidemic diseases in human populations. There
is also a strong laboratory base of contemporary infectious disease
epidemiology. Students working on the microbiology, immunology and
molecular biology of infectious diseases will, via the core courses
and the dual mentorship program, work with theoretical or experimental
population biologists studying infectious diseases.
Biomarkers and the Development of Acute and Chronic
Diseases (Drs. Venkat Narayan, School of
Public Health and Peter Wilson, School of Medicine)
The focus of this program is the utility of biomarkers that predict
the development of heart disease and diabetes mellitus. Research in
this program is focused on the metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes
in the population setting. These projects provide a unique opportunity
to study biomarkers and genetic markers of disease risk and the role
of nutrition. The population samples provide ethnic and racial diversity
(black, white, Hispanics, South Asian) and outcomes related to the
development of heart disease and abnormal glucose levels. The
training program will focus on the interface of skills needed to undertake
research, with a laboratory emphasis in the population setting.
Public Health Genomics: Genetic and Environmental
Determinants of Health (Drs. Michele Marcus, School
of Public Health and Stephanie Sherman, School of Medicine, Department
of Human Genetics)
Although genetic epidemiology as a subfield has existed
for some time, the traditional methods and approaches are not adequate
to take advantage of the explosion of new data. We need special
cross training to take advantage of the “omics” (genomics,
proteomics, metabolomics, toxicogenomics) and explore the joint contributions
of genetics and the environment to the etiology of disease. PhD
programs in epidemiology and genetics would form the backbone, and
the new M2M pathway would build on extensive collaborative research
underway among researchers in different departments.
For Additional Information
If you are interested in the M2M track please contact Kathy Smith. She may be reached at Kathy.Smith@emory.edu or at 404-727-2547.