Obesity: From Genes to ManThe objective of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center Postdoctoral Research Training Program is to train Ph.D. postdoctoral fellows to become productive research scientists capable of establishing scientific careers that further the efforts of the NIH to understand the complex interactions between genetic, molecular, physiological and behavioral aspects of obesity. PBRC aims to bridge the divide between the molecular/genetic approaches and the physiological/behavioral studies of the functions of specific genes by providing training in these areas and by selecting research projects for the postdoctoral fellows that are particularly appropriate to this approach.
Each postdoctoral fellow will be encouraged to develop transdisciplinary research efforts to understand an aspect of the obesity disease. The program will take advantage of the cutting-edge technologies and the wide range of research efforts related to obesity that are available at the Pennington Center. This broad-based training program will enable trainees to write competitive grant proposals that will help them establish successful research careers in academia, academic medicine, governmental agencies, and in the private sector.
Trainees entering the program will be assigned a Primary Preceptor, a faculty member whose research is of major interest to the trainee and in whose lab the trainee's office is likely to be located. The trainee, with advice from his/her Primary Preceptor, will identify another faculty member in an area different from the Primary Preceptor to serve as the trainee's Secondary Preceptor. The Secondary Preceptor will likely be a faculty member who has collaborated with the Primary Preceptor on projects that cut across traditional boundaries of obesity research. Spending time on projects with both these preceptors will likely enable the trainee to acquire skills and ideas needed to design research that incorporates both the preceptors' interests.
* Only applicants who are US citizens or have resident alien status will be considered for these training programs.
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