Description: Interns working with the Integrating Special Populations in Research Core will assist with projects using clinical and translational research using large datasets to understand relationships between exposures to environmental and health care systems factors and clinical outcomes. Special populations include children, older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, low-income individuals, incarcerated and justice-involved individuals, and people living with HIV/AIDS, opioid use disorder, or serious mental illness. Projects completed by prior interns have include the development of marketing materials for investigators looking to integrate special populations in their research, the development of social media strategy for a leadership institute for nurses from underrepresented backgrounds, as well as the design of a study to improve persistent memory issues in COVID-19 long haulers. Current opportunities are available to work on NIH funded projects in the areas of 1) patient safety for antipsychotic-treated children, 2) opioid overdoses among Medicaid beneficiaries, 3) end-of-life care quality among Medicare beneficiaries, and 4) the impact of environmental factors on trajectories of aging.

Description: The Community Engagement Core connects scientists with community leaders and potential research participants. Community organizations are essential for informing research and through these partnerships, scientists are best equipped to translate research into practice and improve human health. A project completed by prior interns centered on attending and evaluating community engagement salons and assessing the utility of community recommendations for a translational scientist. Another project included the development of infrastructure for a digital badge in hypertension.

Description: Team science uses collaboration to address scientific challenges by capitalizing on diverse perspectives and expertise. Scientists and clinicians working on multidisciplinary teams are posed to translate scientific findings into new policies and clinical practices. Prior projects of interns have focused on assessment of team science metrics across U.S. centers for clinical and translational science as well as the development of a new team science course.

Description: The discovery of new research findings as well as the translational of science from the laboratory bench to clinical practice requires strong skills in data acquisition and analysis. Projects related to clinical science that prior interns have completed include the development of a COVID-19 Clinical Trial dataset, evaluation of eSource in the conduct of multi-national clinical trials, and the inclusion of patient-reported outcomes in oncology clinical trials and FDA-approved drugs. Current opportunities are available to work on decentralized clinical trials have impacted the process of clinical and translational research through a systematic review of published literature and web-based oncology biosimilar advertising trends.

Description: The development of new clinical interventions and approaches to improve human health require a highly skilled workforce. This training can come from formal coursework or enrichment activities such as bootcamps, workshops, and more.  Intern projects have included the assessment of training programs in clinical and translational science ranging from high school to current professionals. Examples include pharmacogenetics training for advanced high school students, profiling the development of early career scientists, creating videos on “I Am a Scientist”, leadership training for undergraduates in STEM, as well as assessment of formal training grants.

Description:  Informatics involves the application of computational approaches to evaluate, store, retrieve and disseminate information and knowledge. Skills in informatics are needed to advance translational science to patients as well as clinicians. The workforce development core has developed a public web-based platform (Search CTSA Hubs – CTSA Search Solutions (rutgers.edu)) to assist clinical and translational professionals to gain access to nationwide CTSA hub activities and offerings. This informatics tool has been used by clinical and translational professions (1) to understand the best practices of pilot awards across CTSA hubs, (2) to review, collect, and report on educational offerings of CTSA hubs, and (3) to understand the prevalence and value of social media use by CTSA hubs.  Workforce development internship projects related to informatics for engagement and dissemination have included assessment of CTSA hub use of social media to (1) disseminate and proliferate vaccine information to communities, and (2) engage LinkedIn communities to address the regulatory needs of the clinical and translational professionals. Intern projects leveraging informatics for clinical and translational professional workforce development have (1) tested social media as a marketing strategy for live training seminars, and (2) coordinated CTSA Consortium sponsored training resources nationwide and presented them on its CTSA Search Solutions platform for easy access. Other workforce development interns have used informatics principles to map a prototype competency and skill assessment tool. 

Description: Biomarkers are important biological measures of disease, drug response, infection or exposure to medications or chemicals. They can be used as surrogate endpoints during clinical trials.  Our research team actively collaborates with scientists and clinicians to develop, validate, and quantify a variety of biomarkers including antibodies and microRNAs as well as profile molecular and cellular signatures using RNA flow cytometry and immunophenotyping. Over the past two years, we have participated in numerous studies evaluating SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in a variety of clinical and occupational settings.

Description: Clinical and translational research requires careful design of studies, use of innovative methodologies as well as rigorous evaluation of data, including the analytic science and ethics of genomics to build a new collaborative model of science focused on transforming the practice of medicine. This new paradigm of patient-centered medicine gives doctors the ability to monitor the entire biological profile of individuals, vastly improving disease prediction and prevention, and the treatment of conditions such as cancer, aging diseases, asthma, psychological disorders, diabetes, and many others. As a key resource, we assist scientists and clinicians in the analysis and management of quantitative and qualitative data. We also host numerous trainings throughout the year in order to advance the skills of the workforce in the areas of research design, statistical methods, and increase awareness of available tools for data analysis.  Projects for interns may include assistance with programmatic development and assessment (for undergraduate or professional students) or biostatistical analyses for ongoing research projects (for students enrolled in an MPH/MS program) in the areas of AI/machine learning, clinical trials, data annotation and visualization in large-scale multi-omics applications, causal inference in genetics and microbiome medicine, and national health-related database research.