ABSTRACT The overarching goal of the Research Education Component (REC) is to establish a research education program for the UCSF Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). This new REC program builds on great strengths at UCSF as a research institution, with particularly strong departments of Neurology, Medicine and Psychiatry, and on our ADRC’s prior accomplishments in training early stage researchers through behavioral neurology and neuropsychology fellowships. This new program will focus on early scholars (fellows) and advanced scholars (junior faculty) who have strong potential to become leaders in ADRD. The REC will expand and improve research training at our center by adding new learning experiences to the program and improving outreach to non-neurologists and psychologists so that our program can help a wider variety of researchers to develop successful careers in ADRD. We will achieve these goals through the following Aims: Aim 1: To identify ethnically and culturally diverse early and advanced scholars from a variety fields of who will enroll in a REC track with an individualized program to support their development into leaders of ADRD research; Aim 2: To create multidisciplinary mentorship teams (always including a clinical and a bench scientist) to guide trainees toward a successful career in ADRD research; Aim 3: To deliver individualized didactic experiences introducing trainees to topics such as health economics, global health, social determinants of health, health policy, biomarker research and basic science models of neurodegeneration. Trainees will also participate in a leadership development program; Aim 4: To facilitate exchange and access to other UCSF programs related to aging and diversity including the UCSF OAIC (Pepper Center), RCMAR, MIRECC and GBHI as well as other ADRCs; Aim 5: To create a year-long specialized experience in behavioral neurology for 3rd and 4th year Neurology and Psychiatry residents.
