April 24, 2017

Grant will boost research and training in the fight against lung disease

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chad steele 2017Principal investigator Chad Steele, Ph.D., Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care.The University of Alabama at Birmingham has established its first National Institutes of Health-funded pre-doctoral training program in lung diseases. The program, funded by an NIH T32 grant of $1.07 million over five years, will recruit and train outstanding biomedical scientists for careers in pulmonary research.

“This program will capitalize on the recent growth in lung research at UAB and foster high-level training experiences to develop the next generation of outstanding lung researchers,” said Chad Steele, Ph.D., professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine in the UAB School of Medicine and principal investigator of the training grant. “Diseases of the lung were the third and fourth leading causes of death worldwide in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. We expect these diseases to continue to rise due to factors such as urbanization, environmental pollution and climate change, thus the need for expanded research capacity is acute.”

The training program will recruit three students in the first year and expand to six students in the subsequent four years.

The program will focus on lung diseases such as asthma, cancer, COPD, cystic fibrosis, pneumonia, lung injury and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It will work with mentors from six UAB academic departments and study both adult and pediatric lung disease.

Students will receive education, training and mentoring via specific graduate coursework, pairing with clinical mentors along with research mentors, and weekly exposure to lung-specific basic, translational and clinical research and clinical medicine conferences.

The program is recruiting applicants and will commence July 1.