PROJECT SUMMARY – RESEARCH EDUCATION COMPONENT (REC) The REC serves a unique role for the UCSF ADRC, functioning as a bridge between the robust resources at our center and emerging scholars in other UCSF hubs. We host an annual ADRC Dementia Day to bring together ADRC and non-ADRC researchers from across the UCSF campus, and we maintain programs, including a month-long behavioral neurology rotation, to expose neurology and psychiatry residents, and other early career learners, to ADRD research. Through these activities, we identify postdoctoral fellows transitioning to their first faculty position, and early faculty scholars transitioning to independence, while promoting ADRD research to attract earlier trainees. Once early career researchers enter our REC program, they benefit from a wide array of experiences including multidisciplinary mentorship, exposure to diverse topics related to ADRD, leadership training, grant writing workshops, and meetings with other ADRCs. The REC is headed by leaders with extensive mentorship and training experience, who represent several disciplines, and research methods (neurology, geriatric psychiatry, deep phenotyping, imaging, epidemiology, clinical trials, bench models of neurodegeneration), ensuring that the program meets the needs of its diverse trainees. Thus far, we have appointed 15 REC scholars from a range of disciplines including clinical Neurology, Medicine, Nursing, Psychiatry, and basic neuroscience. Seven of the 15 are from NIA-designated groups that are under-represented in science. In the coming cycle, we will augment our robust programs with additional didactics and conferences, while expanding outreach to the UCSF community to increase exposure to potential candidates. We will pursue the following aims: Aim 1: Support career advancement for emerging researchers from a variety of fields using multidisciplinary mentorship, broad and customized didactics, clinical exposure, leadership training, and dialogue with other ADRCs. We will also provide each scholar with a $10K stipend. Aim 2: Maintain and expand outreach to other UCSF programs interested in ADRD research, and potential REC scholars using web- based communication, conferences, courses, and scholar exchanges to enhance dialogue between our ADRC and other programs at UCSF, and educate early career researchers about training opportunities in UCSF’s ADRC. Aim3: Ensure that the REC trains a diverse group of scholars that bring perspectives from groups who are underrepresented in ADRD research by participating in departmental and university efforts that focus on workforce inclusion, highlighting diversity in our ADRC faculty, describing programs and research activities that expand equity and diversity in research, and participating in scholar exchange with UCSF’s Resource Center on Minority Aging Research. Aim 4: Reach out to early trainees and help them consider a career in ADRD research by maintaining our month-long rotation in behavioral neur...