Grant: Training Grant

High-throughput (eg microarrays, sequencing) and high-content (eg single cell imaging, chemical screening) assays are now an integral part of biomedicine, and have produced successes that are now finding clinical utility. This is true for a range of human diseases including cancer, diabetes, fibrosis and many orphan/neglected diseases. A consequence of the use of these approaches is the need for inter-disciplinary teams that simultaneously provide the excellence to develop these technologies, to model the data quantitatively, and to extract from these models physiologically relevant knowledge that will have impact in the clinic. Such teams involve a broad range of researchers including clinicians, basic researchers, quantitative scientists and experts in technology. Since traditional training programs provide for depth in a single area of research, the current generation of students tends to understand only a small fraction of these systems or integrative biology projects. This ignorance represents an enormous conceptual and practical training challenge. Our program will provide students with a mature understanding of the biology by integrating the trainees into inter-disciplinary research teams. Workshops and courses will provide students from the quantitative sciences instruction in laboratory techniques, and students with biomedical or technological backgrounds instruction in statistics, modeling and computation. Through a seminar series, yearly retreats and special interest groups, the program will introduce students to ethical and translational issues related to their work. By the end of their studies, trainees will have both an in depth understanding of their specific research area and a broad overview of systems and integrative techniques used to study human disease, that the next generation of Canadian researchers will be primed to initiate and drive inter-disciplinary research programs.