Research training in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine is supported primarily by an NHLBI-sponsored Institutional NRSA Training Grant, now in its 21st year, though other foundation and industry sources provide important alternative funding mechanisms. Our basic research programs address fundamental questions concentrated in two important areas of Respiratory Biology - Airway Biology and Oxygen Utilization/Critical Care. However, fundamental commonalities among the issues addressed - such as cell signaling, cellular responses to the microenvironment, genetics, and cell differentiation, proliferation, and death - now blur distinctions between these two programs that in years past may have seemed more clear cut. Accordingly, our Research Training Program provides an interactive and broadly collaborative experience for all of our trainees, that ensures exposure to scientists within and beyond our own Section. We train PhD and MD (or equivalent) post-doctoral researchers side-by-side, recognizing that the special perspectives and experiences that each brings enlarges the exposure and viewpoint of the other. A number of graduate students from several programs also train in our mentors' laboratories, which are amply funded by grants from NIH, foundations, and industry. In accordance with an increased emphasis by NIH on clinical research training, we also offer a program of mechanistic clinical research training, related to Airways Biology and Critical Illness, that complements, extends, and draws upon our basic research programs. Trainees can enroll in certificate or Master's Degree programs that concentrate on health studies and patient oriented research. An extremely high proportion of all our post-doctoral trainees pursue academic careers, reflecting the success of our Section's intention to prepare future leaders.

For more information regarding this program, contact Ms. Juanita Ferguson-Tyler by phone at (773) 702-6790 or via email at jtyler@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu.