Graduate Program for Veterinary Scientists/Scholars
Program Description
The College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University hosts a Graduate Program for Veterinary Scientists/Scholars. The program is intended for veterinarians who aspire to careers in which research will become a significant element of the individual's professional activities. Training in a variety of disciplines is offered by faculty who are distinguished scientists and accomplished mentors.
Provision is made for trainees to follow two different tracks. One track is tailored to individuals who aim for a career in which basic research is combined with teaching and administrative responsibilities. The second pathway anticipates a career that couples research with clinical or service duties. Such individuals are of two types: "clinical scientists" and "translational scientists." Clinical scientists conduct clinical trials, develop treatment protocols, and pursue descriptive research aimed at illuminating the natural history of diseases. By comparison, translational scientists draw upon an enabling discipline - e.g. biochemistry, genetics, or neuroscience - as the basis for hypothesis-driven research calculated to reveal the causes of diseases and the cellular and molecular events underlying disease processes. The Comparative Medicine program is intended for individuals who aspire to careers in basic research or translational science; it is not geared to the training of veterinary specialists or clinical scientists as defined herein.
The Scientists/Scholars Program has more structure than many graduate initiatives at Cornell. Structure aims to provide that training at a high level and to facilitate the progress of scholars in an orderly manner from dependence to independence. Funding is provided by an institutional training grant in comparative medicine (T32 RR 007059) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).