Medical research today involves a difficult balancing of two careers -- providing state of the art medical care, and making new discoveries that utilize cutting edge research approaches from a wide variety of fields. As medicine becomes more specialized and complex, future progress requires the incorporation of advances made almost daily in the laboratory. This poses a dilemma for the practicing physician, who has neither the time nor the training to critically evaluate the most recent results coming out of research labs. The purpose of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is to train individuals who can understand and contribute to advances in research, and can also apply those advances to the field of medical care. The combination of clinical training leading to the M.D. degree with research training leading to the Ph.D. degree is a way to educate scientists who can apply laboratory results to the problems of clinical medicine.

We have structured the MSTP at the University of California, Irvine to incorporate the greatest diversity of training and to allow the greatest flexibility of scheduling. We believe that the best way to train individuals who can understand and apply the latest research results is to combine a solid medical education with in depth research training in a specialized field. Since advances in medicine today can come from any of a wide variety of fields of research, students in the UCI MSTP can pursue their Ph.D. studies in any graduate program at the university. Our graduate programs include all of the Medical School departments, all of the Biological Sciences departments, and graduate programs in Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Computer Sciences, and Social Ecology, to name just a few. In addition, students can choose to pursue their research in an interdepartmental program, such as the program in Molecular Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry, the Beckman Laser Institute or the Research Imaging Center. Since each area of study has different requirements, we have also tried to incorporate as much flexibility as possible into the program. Some students choose to begin their studies with the two basic science years of medical school, some choose to begin with graduate courses and research, and some have integrated medical school courses and research throughout their graduate career. The goal of an M.D./Ph.D. program is to train individuals who can both carry out research and apply that research to patient care, and we are trying to develop in our students the skills needed to integrate the two different worlds.

These are our goals, but the primary determinants of our success in developing medical scientists are the abilities and dedication of our students. The UCI MSTP currently consists of 32 students carrying out their research in eight different departments. Our graduates have accepted residencies and faculty positions at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in the country. In the future, we hope to expand our program and to develop new areas of training, such as an interdepartmental program in biomedical engineering. We also hope to more tightly integrate the medical school basic science curriculum with the course requirements for graduate study. In this way, we will meet the needs of our current and future students, and we will more effectively educate individuals to ultimately make significant contributions to the future advances of medicine.