Clinical and Translational Data Science Training Program

About This Grant

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) strives to develop and promote clinical and translational science (CTS) innovations to reduce, remove, or bypass costly and time-consuming bottlenecks in clinical and translational research (CTR) in order to speed up the delivery of new drugs, diagnostics, and medical devices to patients. Data science, as a primary approach in CTS, has demonstrated broad impact on CTR. This impact stems from the fact that data science is composed of several disciplines, including biostatistics, bioinformatics, clinical informatics, computer science, implementation science, learning health systems, pharmacometrics, systems pharmacology, etc. Data science is crucial in every step of the CTS process. Because of the insufficient number of personnel adequately cross-trained in CTS and data science and the need for future leaders in these fields possessing strong team science skills, we propose a Clinical and Translational Data Science (CTDS) T32 Postdoctoral Training Program. The Ohio State University (OSU) Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) is positioned to lead this CTDS post-doctoral training program. Leveraging strengths from both clinical science and data science at OSU, CTDS has four themes, namely AI in Digital Health, Biostatistics and Population Health, Translational Genomics, and Translational Pharmacology. Our CTDS T32 Postdoctoral Training Program has three training goals: (1) to recruit, rigorously educate, and inspire post-doctoral fellows with various training backgrounds to drive discoveries and innovations in clinical and translational data science; (2) to foster a learning environment grounded in interdisciplinary mentorship excellence focused on trainee success and satisfaction; and (3) to develop future clinical and translational data science leaders who advance and promote human health through discovery, teamwork, science communication, and sustained engagement. Outcomes indicative of successful training include: every trainee shall receive training in at least one of four CTDS themes; every trainee shall receive training in at least two CTS core knowledge components among pre-clinical research, clinical research, clinical implementation and public health; every trainee will demonstrate the ability to work on team science and in a team-based research endeavor; and the program will ensure trainees are selected from highly qualified scholars from multiple disciplines to promote broad participation in clinical and translational data science. In this T32, we will fund four trainees a year, three through this T32 and one from institutional support. Each trainee will receive two-year funding support.