New needs, new programs
The changing nature of training young researchers is reflected in two recent Institute initiatives. One involves postdocs and graduate fellows, the approximately 300 scientists who work and learn in DFCI labs for two to five years. Because they're supported by outside grants, they aren't covered by Dana-Farber's employee-benefits program. Many are from other countries and have to deal with tax and visa issues; all face the challenge of making ends meet in notoriously expensive Boston on a graduate-student salary.
To address their needs, the Institute has opened an Office for Postdoctoral Fellows. Run by a five-person staff, including a full-time director (Claudina Stevenson, PhD) and a faculty supervisor, the office will work on ways to equalize the salary structure for all postdocs and fellows and eliminate disparities in benefits between fellows in different labs. It will also provide career counseling, assistance in applying for research grants, information on seminars, and other services.
"A cancer fellowship is very much about the role models you have, and the models I had at Dana-Farber were among the best anywhere."
Roy Herbst, MD, PhD
The second initiative is a proposed training program for clinical investigators, physician-scientists skilled at "translating" laboratory breakthroughs into better treatments. In response to a widely perceived shortage of such investigators, the program seeks to broaden the career paths historically available in academic medicine.
"The traditional academic model is very clear about how to succeed as a laboratory researcher or as a clinician taking care of patients, but it provides less guidance for people who wish to straddle those two worlds," says DFCI's Jane Weeks, MD, who co-chaired a faculty committee that drafted the program.
"The career incentives — promotions, professional recognition — have all been on one side or the other. But scientific advances have created the need for people who can bring the sides together."
Although the program's details are still being worked out, it may become a model for other institutions, Weeks remarks. "This effort seeks to ensure that young people receive the right mentorship early on, both in the clinical disease centers and laboratories, as well as support and professional rewards.
"It makes sense for Dana-Farber to take this leadership role, to make clinical research training a fundamental part of what we do."
