PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Despite increased funding across the NIH enterprise over the past decade, fewer physician trainees are choosing to pursue scientific careers, contributing to a decline in the number of physician-scientists capable of achieving independent research success. To address the workforce needs, the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University launched the Psychiatry Resident Research Education Program (PRREP) in 2016. Funded by NIMH’s R25 program in 2017, PRREP is agnostic of prior research experience, is available to both our general and child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) training programs, and provides individualized educational planning divided into two phases. Phase 1 aims to increase the number of incoming residents considering a research career by enhancing recruitment and providing early education (career counseling/mentoring, didactics, seminars, on-line coursework) and introductory research experiences. The more research-intensive Phase 2 focuses on gaining experience in key areas, including study design, regulatory considerations, budgeting, data collection/management, and analysis. Total time spent in hands-on research will be approximately 12 months for a resident in the 4-year general adult program and 13 months for a CAP resident who is in training for 5 years. During this first period of funding, our PRREP graduates have been a diverse group of individuals (10% disabled, 13% Hispanic, 13% African American, 42% female) and we have doubled the number of graduates pursuing research careers (50% with a Ph.D.). Our PRREP trainees have been listed as an author on manuscripts 101 times. In this renewal application we seek on-going support from NIMH’s R25 program to expand on the early successes we have achieved with this critical program, building upon the solid foundation we have established in these first 4 years. In this renewal application, we propose to continue to recruit promising trainees into PRREP, providing early and focused mentorship and hands-on research experiences to promote development of skills and knowledge necessary for successful transition to Phase 2. To build upon the success achieved during the initial funding period, we will focus on the following goals: 1) we will target recruitment of individuals interested in CAP research careers, provide early exposure to CAP faculty and enhance the mentorship of trainees interested in CAP; 2) utilizing institutional training and support resources, we will promote excellence in mentorship by providing mentors feedback throughout the academic year, and provide mentorship training and support for early-career faculty with emerging mentoring skills; and 3) informed by the initial 4 years of funding, we will develop, implement and track educational milestones targeting research skills needed to become a successful principal investigator. Funding for the next 5 years will provide us with the means to build on this solid foundation to continue providing inn...