CIST Forum Brings Students, Researchers Together to Share Info
Episode # 33a
Uploaded: December 8, 2009
Running Time: 9:11
SCHMALFELDT: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.
Imagine adding another year to your medical, dental, or veterinary school studies and, as a result, becoming a better doctor, researcher and scientist. Then imagine getting together with other students who are doing the same thing you are -- a chance to swap stories, ideas and social networking information. That was one of the goals of the Clinical Investigator Student Trainee forum, also known as the CIST forum. For two days in November, 270 CIST fellows gathered at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland to compare notes, to network, to hear from former CIST fellows who are now making their mark in the world of clinical research and to gain additional insights related what it will take to have a successful career as a clinical or translational researcher. The seven-year old CIST Forum is the brainchild of Clinical Center Director, Dr. John I. Gallin, his wife, Dr. Elaine K. Gallin, Program Director for Medical Research at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Dr. Frederick Ognibene, Deputy Director for Educational Affairs and Strategic Partnerships in the Clinical Center, and Dr. Michael Gottesman, NIH Director for Intramural Research. Their collective vision led to this unique opportunity for students involved in year-long research and enrichment programs to get together to share experiences, hear about up-to-date medical advances, and gain knowledge designed to help them with advancing their careers. The Director welcomed the CIST forum participants.
GALLIN: As you go through your journey, keep in mind that there may be some things here that can help facilitate and enable your research.
SCHMALFELDT: Dr. Gallin went on to define some of the forum's goals.
GALLIN: ...One of the goals that I have and I think that many of the people at NIH share is to open the doors of this facility that you are in more to the extramural or outside community and create a more porous relationship between what you will doing at your own universities and promoting interactions that have never been possible in the past.
SCHMALFELDT: Dr. Ognibene coordinates all aspects of the forum, which this year came with some changes.
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 the alumni of the programs participating in the CIST program.
SCHMALFELDT: And they weren't disappointed, as CIST participants heard lively discussions on such topics as loan repayment, research funding opportunities, and career advice from clinician-scientists who recently completed their training. They were also treated to a keynote address from Dr. Nancy Andrews, dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. Andrews, the first and only female dean of a top-ten medical school, spoke on her research background, her perspectives on health care reform, and her experiences as a woman in science. Forum participants also heard from Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health; Dr. Stephen Katz, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Dr. Ognibene described how this year's forum went above and beyond in connecting with the audience.
OGNIBENE: Another highlight of this year's CIST forum was the fact that we were very contemporary in using social networking tools to not only provide information to attendees prior to the meeting - such practical things as the program's agenda, information on how to get to the NIH campus - but during the event as questions were raised from the audience either to get access to a website or to slides. Those were immediately made available through the use of "tweets" via Twitter. It was really our attempt to not only be contemporary in our ability to use these social networking tools, but to really provide information to the students based on the questions they asked.
SCHMALFELDT: And what did the CIST forum participants think of the event? Here's a sampling, starting with Steven Schleicher, an HHMI fellow from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who talked about the opportunity to meet other students who are interested in the same areas of research.
SCHLEICHER: I was excited to do a year of research to get a chance to be curious which you don't get much time for in medical school. And it's nice to get a chance to meet people who are interested in similar things.
SCHMALFELDT: Sinea Vogel, a Doris Duke fellow from the University of California, San Francisco, said she was looking forward to the networking luncheon, organized around various research areas of interest.
VOGEL: "For me, the most useful thing was meeting other students that are applying into the area that I am interested in, and also, I am planning on going into dermatology and also going to the networking lunch for that."
SCHMALFELDT: Joseph Rojas from Yale enjoyed the presentations by the NIH Institute and Center Directors.
ROJAS: I enjoyed the talk yesterday from the NIMH. I think it was really interesting trying to show the ways in which psychiatry and neurology are converging. I think it is really exciting work. In my undergrad, I was in a cognitive psychology lab so it was fairly similar to some of the things I had done before and it was exciting to see that work.
SCHMALFELDT: Eliot Shearer, a Doris Duke clinical research fellow from the University of Iowa was impressed by the NIH Campus after the students took focused tours one afternoon.
SHEARER: I really enjoyed the tour of NIH facilities. I thought it was really amazing, the amount of space they have and just how everything was set up here and organized. I thought it was really cool.
SCHMALFELDT: And the importance of this year's Alumni Panel discussion wasn't lost on Veena Rao from Yale.
RAO: I thought it was nice, especially for the alumni forum. They had alumnus from different years so you could kind of see the impression not only from where we are, but also as people get a little bit older, more established.
SCHMALFELDT: Dr. Ognibene also highlighted the alumni 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 the focus was spent on opportunities to help the transition from fellowship to junior faculty and that included such concepts as job searches, considering geographic alternatives to their primary training and, importantly, funding opportunities from foundations and private sources.
SCHMALFELDT: The medical, dental and veterinary students in attendance are participants in year-long programs like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH research scholars and HHMI medical fellows, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation clinical research fellows, National Center for Research Resources/Clinical and Translational Science Award-sponsored students, NIH Clinical Research Training Program fellows, Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation fellows, as well as fellows in the applied epidemiology fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fogarty International clinical research scholars, and the NIH MD/Ph.D Partnership Training Program fellows. Dr. Ognibene lauded the partnerships and cooperation that makes the CIST forum possible each year.
OGNIBENE: It is important to stress that even though the event was held on NIH Campus, the forum is an event that is really based on partnerships and the event could not have been done as successfully without the collaboration and input from all the participating programs, as well as a significant input from a number of NIH and CC staff.
SCHMALFELDT: For more information about this year's CIST forum, and to learn more about the groundbreaking medical research that goes on every day at the NIH Clinical Center, log on to http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov. From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
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