Grant encourages protected research time for medical fellows

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) announces the five 2009 recipients of the ASH Research Training Award for Fellows, a grant that encourages junior researchers to pursue careers in academic hematology by supporting protected time to conduct research during their fellowship training.

A report on the state of U.S. hematology training programs published in Blood indicates that many programs find it difficult to provide meaningful protected time for fellows to do research. Currently, research training accounts for less than 50 percent of the total educational experience in most programs.

"This award will help ensure that talented trainees will be given the opportunity to perform research during their training, allowing them to develop and refine skills that will give them the best chance of contributing to significant medical advances throughout their careers". said ASH President Nancy Berliner, MD, Chief of Hematology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The 2009 ASH Research Training Award for Fellows recipients are:

• Janice M. Staber, MD, University of Iowa Children's Hospital, Iowa City, IA
  
• Omar I. Abdel-Wahab, MD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
  
• Sascha A. Tuchman, MD, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
  
• Daniel A. Pollyea, MD, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
  
• Laura E. Hogan, MD, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY
  

This program provides grants of $50,000 for a one-year period to third- and fourth-year trainees.

Source: American Society of Hematology