# Neuroscience Training Program

> **NIH NIH T32** · UNIVERSITY OF IOWA · 2024 · $301,147

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
This renewal application requests support for integrated, broad-based, fundamental, multidisciplinary
predoctoral training of first- and second-year students in Neuroscience at the University of Iowa. The
application builds on more than three and a half decades of success in matriculating, training, and placing top-
caliber PhD students. Our Program features mature leadership, with Daniel Tranel, PhD, having led the
Program and T32 since 2000. For the next cycle, in response to Program growth, leadership will be enhanced
by the addition of two MPIs, Sheila Baker, PhD, and Gordon Buchanan, MD, PhD. During the past 5 years, the
Program has seen sharp increases in student enrollment and funded neuroscience faculty, reflecting the strong
institutional emphasis on Neuroscience and the major infusion of resources from the Iowa Neuroscience
Institute (including new buildings and numerous new faculty hires). The Program draws on a long Iowa
tradition of collaborations between basic and clinical scientists (many of our preceptors are clinician-scientists),
a strong translational focus, and a major emphasis on quantitative training. The Training Faculty is comprised
by 79 experienced, well-funded, diverse neuroscientists with research interests that span the gamut of
neuroscience. Students participate in a carefully honed curriculum that offers broad and fundamental training in
levels of analysis and breadth of approaches, with a special focus on the neuroscience of disease and
disorders (including a highly successful Neurobiology of Disease course). There is intensive training in
experimental design, statistical methodology, quantitative skills, reproducibility, and professional skills
development (enhanced by new curricular components in teaching, oral/written communication,
networking/skill building, and grantsmanship), and detailed annual student evaluation using the Individual
Developmental Plan. The Program incorporates three laboratory rotations, regular programmatic activities
(Seminar, Research Day, journal clubs), and comprehensive training in responsible conduct of research and
reproducibility. Program evaluation includes detailed internal and external reviews that evaluate all aspects of
the Program and recommend changes. The “value-added” is especially compelling—NIH training grant dollars
enhance every aspect of our Program and have contributed directly to sustained successes marked by
outstanding time to degree (5.1 years), productivity (5.8 publications per student, 2.4 as first author),
completion rate (86%), and placement of graduates in stellar neuroscience careers (54% of our graduates are
in tenured or tenure-track academic positions). Our Program has a strong record of recruiting and training
students from underrepresented backgrounds (a third of our student cohort is diverse; half of our training grant
appointees are from diverse backgrounds), and this T32 is the parent grant to a new R25 Doctoral Readiness
P...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10846202
- **Project number:** 2T32NS007421-26
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
- **Principal Investigator:** Sheila A Baker
- **Activity code:** T32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $301,147
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 1999-07-09 → 2029-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10846202

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10846202, Neuroscience Training Program (2T32NS007421-26). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10846202. Licensed CC0.

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