Program Highlights

OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS AND INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY
TRAINING PROGRAM

The mission of the NIH/NIGMS-sponsored Systems and Integrative Biology (SIB) training program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine is to improve people’s lives through innovation in research and education that will allow for an understanding of how multiple organ systems and physiological processes function together to maintain homeostasis, and how disruption of this relationship causes disease. To achieve this goal, our objective is to provide predoctoral trainees with 1) a curriculum that maintains high standards for intellectual interdisciplinary rigor and creativity, and 2) access to research opportunities that cross traditional disciplinary barriers.

The Systems and Integrative Biology training program fulfills a need for a graduate program that trains students to investigate human disease by joining together information across multiple biomedical science disciplines to solve complex biological problems. The SIB training program was designed to be an integral component of the Biomedical Sciences program, which serves as the parent training program that allows us to accomplish our mission. The program was designed to provide both breadth and depth of high quality training to prepare its graduates for successful careers in biomedical research.

The SIB trainees matriculate through the Biomedical Sciences program to meet all of the established requirements for graduation. Coursework, seminars, laboratory rotations, grant-writing, training in the responsible conduct of research, and eleven areas-of-research emphasis are the main mechanisms by which the program provides collaborative and interdisciplinary training opportunities. The faculty who participate in the SIB program are leading basic biomedical science researchers who are committed to student training and who embrace the vision of diversity in the academic research community.

Although sharing activities between SIB and the Biomedical Sciences program trainees has strengthened all students, one goal of the SIB training program is to provide exclusive additional activities for the SIB trainees to strengthen their ability to fill the leadership positions of tomorrow in biomedical science research. Thus, we have designed a number of scholarly, career development, and social activities for the SIB trainees to achieve this goal. Using this overall approach, our SIB trainees possess the interdisciplinary knowledge and skills that will enable them to achieve our training program mission and will position them well for leadership positions in a wide range of biomedical science careers.