August 21, 2006

Dear Sackler Students,

Welcome to NYU!  You are fortunate to have entered graduate school during an extraordinary period in the history of biomedical research.  Never before has there been so much potential for discoveries made at the basic research bench to be fruitfully translated to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human disease. As the largest basic science department at the NYU School of Medicine, the Department of Pathology provides primary appointments to more than 80 full-time clinical and basic science faculty, is home to a long-standing and thriving Graduate Program in Molecular Oncology and Immunology, and has a long tradition as a forum for interaction among diverse trainees (graduate students, medical students, residents, clinical fellows, and postdoctoral fellows) that dates back to the days when Lewis Thomas held the Chair. 

The reorganization of the research side of the department into an Immunology Program, a Molecular Oncology Program, and a new Experimental Pathology Program allowed us to formulate an exciting new graduate program in Pathobiology and provides a necessary infrastructure for both continuing this graduate program and fostering translational research in the coming years.  The Dpartment's two graduate programs (Immunology and Mol Onc are considered one program from the educational perspective) are designed to provide students opportunities for the usual in-depth graduate training while also providing the means to ensure broad scientific education.

The Graduate Program in Molecular Oncology and Immunology is a long-standing, thriving program that takes advantage of our Department's and School's superb history in both areas of research. (Click on the Molecular Oncology and Immunology links to the left to get more information about the faculty, their research interests, and typical MOI curricula.) Our new program in Pathobiology is designed with a different student in mind, and so we will explain a bit more about the program here.

The explosive growth of basic biological knowledge in the latter half of the 20th century has been accompanied by an equally aggressive trend toward specialization.  Research that was once accomplished by generalists must now be carried out by scientists with extremely specialized training. The Pathobiology graduate program was devised to bridge the increasing divide between the bench and the bedside at both the student and faculty levels.  Over the past year I have worked with some remarkably dedicated, experienced, and highly motivated Co-Directors to devise a curriculum to provide PhD students a foundation in basic medical concepts that will empower you to pursue translational research projects and lend a valuable biological perspective to those of you who choose to work on basic research topics. To this end, our program provides carefully selected, relevant medical knowledge interwoven with a modern molecular biology graduate curriculum.  Importantly, the program will also prepare you to work with clinical collaborators as members of research teams, and it will foster interactions between clinicians and scientists who historically have had little formal opportunity to traverse the boundaries between clinic and lab. These interactions will have you, as graduate students, as their centerpiece, and we believe this will tremendously enrich your education.

Our overarching philosophy is simple: we believe that understanding the pathologic basis of disease is of fundamental importance in training the next generation of biomedical scientists, whether you work on basic biological problems or in translational areas. 

Pathobiology will promote this understanding through: 

1) a new pathobiology curriculum carefully designed to present an integrated view of pathogenesis at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ system, and organismal levels;

2) targeted clinical experiences guided by practicing pathologists and research-oriented physicians; and

3) co-mentorship of dissertation projects by a relevant clinician as well as the studentŐs principal advisor.

Pathobiology courses will be open to residents, fellows, MD/PhD students and other graduate students in addition to Pathobiology students, further enriching the intellectual environment.  The clinical rotations and co-mentoring will train you in a collaborative, team-oriented research setting that will help prepare them for what we believe will become a dominant paradigm in biological research over the next decade.

We are excited to be bringing you this new program, designed to take full advantage of the fact that your Graduate School is located in the heart of a great academic medical center. We are confident that our curriculum will tremendously enhance your training as the next generation of biomedical researchers.

Sincerely,

David B. Roth, MD, PhD