Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)

Thesis Defense

Featured Student

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Stefanie Rader

The MSTP anatomy class is great. We have a 1:4 ratio of faculty to students in lab and 1:12 in lectures. We get personalized attention from the faculty, and the timing of the course allows us to take graduate school courses during the first year of the program.

 

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) is one of the nation’s oldest. From the start, our goal has been to train a diverse group of outstanding students to become future leaders of academic medicine and medical research. Continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1964, the Einstein MSTP has 499 illustrious Alumni with careers spanning the spectrum from basic science research to clinical medicine and many variations in between.

Today, the Einstein MSTP is still unique. Larger than most other MSTPs, it fosters a strong academic and social community within the college. While large enough to be an independent academic unit, the program is still small enough to provide students with the individual attention their unique careers require.

The current training program recognizes that the successful physician-scientist training is not simply medical school plus graduate training. The program integrates MSTP-specific courses with medical and graduate courses, during the first two years of preclinical course work. Integration continues in the PhD thesis years through weekly involvement in the MSTP Continuity Clinic and monthly Clinical Pathological Conferences and MSTP Career Paths seminars.

Students have outstanding publications and residency placements.

Our interview process for the class entering in 2024 will be entirely virtual. We will have an in person revisit for accepted applicants. To learn more about the Einstein community please view this short video Life at Einstein. 

The Einstein MSTP encourages applications from all individuals. As stated in the College's Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan for Excellence, "At Einstein, we value all people and perspectives that make us unique and increase our diversity at large. Consistent with its focus on social justice, Albert Einstein College of Medicine reaffirms its commitment to recruiting, retaining and advancing individuals from historically underrepresented and marginalized minority groups in the scientific and medical professions. At the College of Medicine, this includes, (in no particular order, and is not limited to) women, individuals who are Black, Latino/Latina; Pacific Islander or indigenous Americans; individuals from new immigrant populations; individuals with both apparent and nonapparent disabilities; all sexual and gender minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual and queer people as well as transgender, gender-nonconforming and intersex individuals; religious minorities and individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds."

Four M.D.-Ph.D. students share what motivates them to pursue the long and rigorous course to become physician-scientists.  

Awards & Accomplishments

  • Erik Guillen NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Impact of T cell receptor signaling on memory CD8+ T cell stemness" (Sponsor, Gregoire Lauvau, Microbiology & Immunology)
  • Helen Jung NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Strategies for next-generation flavivirus vaccine development " (Sponsor, Jon Lai, Biochemistry)
  • Riana Lo Bu NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled " Dissecting GWAS Identified Risk Variants in Parkinson's Disease – Functional Role of GPNMB in the Pathogenesis of PD " (Sponsor, Frank Soldner, Neuroscience)
  • Vanessa Ruiz NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Characterizing subsets of HIV-infected and uninfected CD14+CD16+ monocytes that contribute to neuropathogenesis" (Sponsor, Joan Berman, Pathology)
  • Jessie Larios Valencia NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "The Role of Dedifferentiation in Basal like Breast Cancer" (Sponsor, Wenjun Guo, Cell Biology)
  • Eric Sosa NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Defining the gene regulatory roles of non-coding variants in the pathogenesis of autism" (Sponsor, John Greally, Genetics)
  • Tram Nguyen NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Reward Function in Adolescents with Depression and Cannabis Use" (co-Sponsors,  Vilma Gabbay and Benjamin Ely, PCI-Neuroscience & Psychiatry)
  • Gabriel Bedard NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Rational design of anti-cancer therapeutics harnessing the synthetic lethality of methionine metabolism and arginine methyltransferases" (Sponsor,  Vern Schramm, Biochemistry)
  • Matanel Yheskel NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Epigenetic and transcriptional consequences of Intellectual Disability-associated mutations in the histone lysine demethylase KDM5" (Sponsor,  Julie Secombe, Genetics)
  • Andrea Bae NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Role of brain oscillations in midbrain and forebrain networks supporting stimulus selection in the sound localization pathway of barn owls" (Sponsor,  Jose Luis Pena, Neuroscience)
  • Jacob Stauber NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Understanding stem-cell evolution dynamics of donor clonal hematopoiesis in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation at a single-cell level" (co-Sponsors,  John Greally and Ulrich Steidl, Genetics and Cell Biology)
  • Ian MacArthur NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Epigenetic regulation of neural stem cell biology by Tet DNA dioxygenases" (Sponsor,  Meelad Dawlaty, Genetics)
  • Leti Nunez NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Determining the effect of RNA binding protein phosphorylation on mRNA fate" (Sponsor,  Robert Singer, Anatomy and Structural Biology)
  • Chris Nishimura NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Mechanistic Dissection and Therapeutic Targeting of B7x in Cancer" (Sponsor,  XingXing Zang, Microbiology & Immunology)
  • John "Jack" Barbaro NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Methamphetamine and Antiretroviral Therapy Impact Macrophage Functions and Macroautophagy: Implications for HIV Neuropathogenesis" (Sponsor,  Joan Berman, Pathology)
  • Ryan Graff NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Platelet PI3Kβ regulation of metastasis" (Sponsor,  Jonathan Backer and Anne Bresnick, Molecular Pharmacology)
  • Henrietta Bains NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "How does mTOR sense lipid in vivo" (Sponsor,  Rajat Singh, Developmental & Molecular Biology)
  • Julio Flores NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Epigenetic regulation of stem cells and development by the DNA dioxygenase Te2" (Sponsor,  Meelad Dawlaty, Genetics)
  • Daniel Borger NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Developing a novel ex vivo platform to support hematopoietic cells and characterize the stem cell niche" (Sponsor,  Paul Frenette, Cell Biology)
  • Ryan Malonis NIH NRSA F30 Fellowship for a project entitled "Discovery & characterization of human monoclonal antibodies targeting multiple arthritogenic alphaviruses" (Sponsor, Jon Lai, Biochemistry)
  • Bianca Ulloa NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Deciphering the development of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell self-renewal and differentiation" (Sponsor,  Teresa Bowman, Developmental & Molecular Biology)
  • Taylor Thompson NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Transcriptional Regulatory and Cell Differentiation Influences of an Endocrine Disrupting Chemical" (Sponsor, John Greally, Genetics)
  • Michelle Gulfo NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Assessing dopaminergic modulation of an associative circuit within the dentate gyrus" (Sponsor, Pablo Castillo, Neuroscience)
  • Meera Trivedi NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Characterizing Novel Regulations of Dendritic Tiling in C. elegans" (Sponsor, Hannes Buelow, Neuroscience)
  • Hayden Hatch NIH NRSA F31 Fellowship for a project entitled "Transcriptional regulation, neuronal development, and function of the mushroom body in a Drosophila model of intellectual disability" (Co-Sponsors, Julie Secombe and Nicholas Baker, Neuroscience/Genetics)

 more awards 

Publications

  • publicationsWilliams DKA, Christophers B, Keyes T, Kumar R, Granovetter MC, Adigun A, Olivera J, Pura-Bryant J, Smith C, Okafor C, Shibre M, Daye D, Akabas MH. Sociodemographic factors and research experience impact MD-PhD program acceptance. JCI Insight. 2024 Feb 8; 9(3):e176146.
  • publications Fooksman DR, Jing Z, Park R. New insights into the ontogeny, diversity, maturation and survival of long-lived plasma cells. Nat Rev Immunol. 2024 Feb 8. doi: 10.1038/s41577-024-00991-0. Epub ahead of print.
  • publicationsFlamholz ZN, Biller SJ, Kelly L. Large language models improve annotation of prokaryotic viral proteins. Nat Microbiol. 2024 Feb; 9(2):537-549.
  • publications Fluss R, Lo Bu R, Kobets AJ, Gomez JA. The complex treatment paradigms for concomitant tethered cord and scoliosis: illustrative case. J Neurosurg Case Lessons. 2024 Jan 29; 7(5):CASE23574.

more publications