Registration Opens for Mailman’s Health and Research Skills Boot Camp
A popular summer workshop just got an upgrade.
The Mailman School of Public Health has taken some of its summer course offerings and developed them into an expanded, formal boot camp-style training program for trainees and investigators of all career stages.
The Skills for Health and Research Professionals (SHARP) training program will feature 13 sessions from June through August. Most courses will cover two to three days of intensive analysis, instruction, and other activity, all to be taught by leading experts.
Courses include epigenetics, machine learning, the exposome, radiation safety, causal mediation analysis, principal investigator lab leadership, functional genetics, perinatal comfort care, and grant writing for the NIH.
The sessions will take place on the campus of Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Visit the program’s page to see course descriptions and training dates or to register. Those who are interested may also join the program’s general email list to receive updates.
A limited number of professional development scholarship awards are available. Learn more or apply.
Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, who created the program, said people at all stages of their health and research careers will benefit from the courses.
“I had the idea to start our boot camps—which this year have become the SHARP program—when I realized that it was nearly impossible to find researchers in the job market who had all the skills necessary for the multifaceted collaborations and work that are typical in my lab and my department,” he said.
Baccarelli, an epigeneticist and board-certified clinical endocrinologist, is the Leon Hess Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He directs the Laboratory of Precision Environmental Health at the Mailman School, and his research focuses on epigenetics, mitochondriomics, and computational epigenomics.
“While each of us strives to be highly specialized, our work is increasingly multidisciplinary,” Baccarelli said. “Also, in today’s world biomedicine changes incredibly fast, and that also pressures us to find ways to update our toolkit.”
This is where SHARP can make a difference.
“There is an increasing need for learning that is highly specialized and that can be achieved quickly,” Baccarelli said. “The SHARP program addresses this need. The enthusiastic reception among trainees of our boot camps shows that we have been able to provide a high-quality learning experience that addresses a critical need of our time.”