Alumni Offer Advice to Future Clinical Researchers at 2009 CIST Forum

Episode # 32
Uploaded: December 3, 2009
Running Time: 6:20

MARTINO: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. Approximately 270 medical, dental and veterinary students from across the country flooded the hallways of the Clinical Center in November for the seventh annual Clinical Investigator Student Trainee, also known as CIST, Forum. This next generation of clinician-scientists came to the NIH to hear leading researchers speak on the latest in biomedical research and technologies. They also had the opportunity to tour the newest labs and research units located in the NIH Clinical Center, and to network with peers and possible future mentors.

One highlight of the two-day event was a panel offering four alumni of research fellowship programs represented at the CIST Forum. The presenters reviewed their own career paths and gave practical tips and advice for those interested in careers in clinical and translational research.

Dr. Frederick Ognibene was the panel's moderator and is the Clinical Center's Deputy Director of Educational Affairs and Strategic Partnerships. He sat down with Clinical Center Radio to discuss how the Forum went.

OGNIBENE: Feedback from previous forums indicated that the students were more interested in hearing from individuals who were earlier in their careers and were immediately past their fellowship training. With that feedback, we envisioned this year a new panel which focused on alumni of the programs participating in the CIST forum.

MARTINO: Dr. Clifford Weiss, assistant professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Sahil Parikh, assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Dr. April Armstrong, assistant clinical professor of dermatology and director of the teledermatology program at the University of California, Davis Health System, and Dr. Vamsi Mootha, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, comprised the panel.

OGNIBENE: What this panel provided was very clear cut advice on next steps, for example, how to choose a residency, the importance of mentoring in their career development. A lot of focus was spent on opportunities to help the transition from fellowship to junior faculty that included such concepts as job searches, considering geographic alternatives to their primary training and importantly funding opportunities, such as some of the early NIH career transition awards, as well as funding opportunities from foundations and private sources.

MARTINO: Dr. Clifford Weiss, a former NIH Clinical Research Training Program fellow, spoke about the importance of taking time off from the classroom to delve into clinical research.

WEISS: I took the slow route in many ways ... I came here in the second year of the CRTP and stayed for two years. I think my time here was a very important formative time in my research career... it was in the early days of my research and it really shifted me from the bench into translational and clinical research.

MARTINO: Dr. Sahil Parikh, a former Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation fellow, emphasized the importance of mentorship.

PARIKH: The mentorship point is critical. They will give you sage advice. They will also give you something of a crystal ball into the future, and at this point you guys are going back to the clinics, you need to ask yourself who do I want to be like. Do I want to be a bench scientist or do I want to be a clinical trialist or do I want to try to do this crazy clinical/translational-type career that Clifford and I have tried to do?

MARTINO: Consistent with Dr. Parikh's message, training the next generation of clinical researchers is a central component of the Clinical Center's mission. In addition to developing the CIST forum, the Clinical Center's office of clinical research training and medical education offers a wide variety of training and educational initiatives for students, residents, fellows and professionals looking to become, as Dr. Parikh said, "good doctors". An emphasis on training was not the only tip forum attendees learned from the alumni panel, Dr. April Armstrong, once a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation clinical research fellow, shared her experience with the daunting residency application process.

ARMSTRONG: Rejection letters. So you will-well maybe some of you won't, but probably most of you will-receive some rejection letters, and they are kind of hard to take because we all have a certain opinion of ourselves, and we don't want to see that someone doesn't even want to say yes to an interview. So something you don't want to say for yourself when you see a rejection letter is "I really suck."... There is definitely an element of randomness to the whole process, there is an element of luck and oftentimes there is no real rhyme or reason why you won't get an interview at a certain place.

MARTINO: Yale student Joseph Rojas, a forum attendee, appreciated the advice from those who have gone before him.

ROJAS: I thought it was helpful to see people who had gone through this and how they had gone from mentees to developing their own line of research and trying to find funding for that.

MARTINO: Dr. Weiss spoke to the relationships made at the CIST Forum.

WEISS: The people you are sitting next to now, you are going to be with for the rest of your life. You are going to be sitting next to them at meetings, they are going to be reviewing your grants, which will be nice, you are going to be reviewing each others grants, you are going to be on committees together, you are going to see each other on panel discussions. So the networking that I was able to do here which I didn't even know I was doing ... was unbelievable.

MARTINO: This was the seventh year the NIH Clinical Center has hosted the CIST Forum. For more information about the Clinical Research Training Program or for updates from the NIH Clinical Center, including news about the medical research going on here every day, log on to http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov. From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Nicole Martino at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

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