HudsonAlpha and UAB awarded NIH training grant

Program is first of its kind to incorporate research and medical training

Huntsville, Ala. — HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been awarded a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award to train postdoctoral fellows who have earned an MD and/or a PhD. The UAB-HudsonAlpha Genomic Medicine Research Training Program is designed to recruit trainees from various disciplines and provide mentorship and clinical research training in genomic medicine. At HudsonAlpha, the program will provide up to two years of support for postdoctoral trainees who choose to learn and work at the Institute.

“The synergy between HudsonAlpha and UAB is a unique strength of the program, enabling collaboration that helps to bring genomic medicine into patient care,” said Greg Barsh, MD, PhD. Barsh, a faculty investigator at HudsonAlpha, is a principal investigator for the grant along with UAB’s Bruce Korf, MD, PhD. Korf is a chair of the department of genetics and the director for the Heflin Center for Genomic Sciences at UAB.

The NIH grant – known as a T32 grant – is the first of its kind to be awarded to a program that emphasizes both research and medical training in genomic medicine. More information about eligibility for the program is available on the UAB website.

“We expect that our trainees will be working on projects that will enhance our ability to incorporate genomics into medical practice and to get firsthand experience in implementation,” Korf said. “The program is also developing an approach to education that will be useful to clinical and laboratory scientists across a broad spectrum of medical disciplines, which will be critical as genomics is integrated across all areas of medicine.”