Neuro-Oncology Fellowship Program Features

Program Features

The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions has had an NIH funded training grant designed to foster "Research Training in Neuro-Oncology" since 1987. Although this 2 or 3 year research fellowship was originally designed to prepare neurosurgeons for academic careers in neuro-oncology, we have recently received additional NIH funding to expand our training program to include radiation therapists, medical and pediatric oncologists, neurologists, and others committed to an academic career in neuro-oncology. In addition, this new funding has expanded the number of training positions available and added formal course requirements to the fellowship. The creation of the Neuro-Oncology Branch at the National Institutes of Health in 2000 provides an enormous number of unique opportunities for clinical and laboratory training in neuro-oncology. The Neuro-Oncology Programs at the NIH and Johns Hopkins have decided to pool their combined resources for fellowship training in neuro-oncology as of July, 2001. Thus, this brochure presents a description of the combined Johns Hopkins and NIH Neuro-Oncology Programs.

Applicants with M.D. degrees who have completed at least one year of postdoctoral training toward board certification in their sub specialty and are committed to a career in academic neuro-oncology are candidates for this research fellowship. Applicants are selected on the basis of merit. Each trainee is provided with a unique two or three year program. In addition to their laboratory experiences and formal course work, the trainees attend clinical and research conferences, seminars, and courses relevant to neuro-oncology, their research activities, and their needs as future academicians.

The major features of this training program include:

1. Scrupulous supervision of fellow training, education, and career development.
2. A carefully considered set of 7 required courses to be taken during the fellowship to ensure that each trainee receives formal instruction in biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical and laboratory research methods, biomedical writing, neuroanatomy, and the responsible conduct of research.
3. Extensive research opportunities with established funded investigators from multiple specialties who routinely collaborate on laboratory and clinical investigations in neuro-oncology,
4. Comprehensive research facilities that are readily available to fellows in participating investigator laboratories at the NIH and at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
5. A rich multidisciplinary training environment that includes extensive clinical neuro-oncology activities, clinical and laboratory neuro-oncology research conferences, and a wide range of educational opportunities within The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and the NIH,
6. A productive, stable, and cohesive training faculty that foster multidisciplinary research and serve as appropriate role models for physicians seeking an academic career in neuro-oncology,
7. An outstanding record of training fellows in neuro-oncology, and the involvement of an experienced Training Grant Steering Committee to provide continual reassessment of activities of the training grant.