The Clinical Research Training Center (CRTC), a component of the Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), provides a cohesive and supportive infrastructure to foster clinical research training and career development for predoctoral students, house-staff, postdoctoral fellows and faculty. Active mentoring, hands on research experiences and formal didactic programs in clinical research methods leading to a certificate or Masters Degree in Clinical Investigation are core components of the program. The CRTC represents a paradigm shift in the approach to clinical research training for ICTS institutional partners by formally integrating dozens of diverse training programs into a single location and administrative umbrella.

The mission of the CRTC is to provide outstanding clinical and translational research training. This is accomplished by:

• integrating and enhancing existing training programs
• developing new clinical and translational courses
• promoting multidisciplinary team training
• developing new career development programs
• providing improved evaluation and tracking for all training programs
• providing mechanisms and infrastructure for sharing best practices, including educational resources and materials, curriculums, evaluation materials, minority recruitment strategies and materials to track trainees, mentors, faculty, and the training programs

Additional training will be developed to address the broad spectrum of both levels of translational research (bench to bedside and bedside to community) including issues of Good Clinical Practice, investigator sponsored vs. industry sponsored studies, entrepreneurial issues of intellectual property development, recruitment and retention of research study participants, understanding and overcoming cultural barriers, methods of community based research, and reducing health disparities.

Current mentored research training programs include:

KL2 Career Development Award (formerly K12)

The KL2 Career Development Award is aimed at fellows, post-doctoral scholars, and junior faculty committed to multidisciplinary clinical research. The program provides generous financial support and benefits that allow scholars to focus on didactic studies and clinical research to further their career goals and to make independent contributions to clinical and translational science.

Postdoctoral Program (formerly K30)

The Postdoctoral Program provides career development for investigators through didactic coursework and electives, mentored training, work-in-progress research seminars, and an optional Master of Science program in Clinical Investigation

TL1 Predoctoral Program (formerly T32)

The Predoctoral Program provides career development for medical and allied healthcare students through didactic coursework, mentored training, work-in-progress research discussions, journal clubs and conferences.

Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship Program

The Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship Program provides funds to support medical students to participate in didactic coursework and hands-on clinical research training during an additional year of medical school. The program provides an individualized and in-depth experience in clinical research