TRAINING GRANTS EXPAND RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES
Two federally funded programs greatly enhance training opportunities for UCSB PhD students
By Andrew Masuda
The next generation of biological scientists and engineers is receiving enhanced research training opportunities at UC Santa Barbara thanks to two training programs operated by the Department of Bioengineering — the National Institutes of Health (NIH) T32 in Quantitative Mechanobiology program and the National Science Foundation’s Data Driven Biology (DDB) Predoctoral Training program.
Both five-year training programs count as credit toward a PhD and provide focused coursework and professional development, while supporting students to “undertake research rotations in multiple labs so they begin right away to build a network and a community,” said Beth Pruitt, chair of the Bioengineering Department. “The program is designed around the idea of having the flexibility to explore different labs to help them decide on their PhD paths and projects.”
DDB trainees engage in “in-vivo” research practices via lab explorations and individually designed research experiences in their first year of the training grant, along with three courses designed to provide fundamental skillsets to process, analyze, and treat large datasets characteristic of modern quantitative bioscience. The program recently welcomed its fourth cohort, upping the total number of DDB trainees to twenty, spanning six graduate degree programs.
The T32 program provides training in quantitative bioscience methods, engineering models and devices, and multi-disciplinary cross-training to develop and apply quantitative approaches to problems in mechanobiology. Currently, the program supports eighteen students from seven different degree programs.
