7. Project Abstract India accounts for 15% of the Global Burden of Disease for psychiatric, neurological, and substance use disorders, greater than in all Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) combined, due in part to an insufficient number of psychiatrists, a dearth of locally-relevant interventions to meet mental health needs, and a paucity of research training for professionals to develop, implement, evaluate, and replicate meaningful approaches. There is an urgent need to strengthen research capacity related to interdisciplinary intervention and implementation research. We propose to expand sustainable research infrastructure by training (i) early-career researchers at the graduate and junior faculty levels and (ii) the next generation of senior research mentors. We will continue our tradition of hands-on, trainee-initiated research as the keystone for our training while fostering team-based, interdisciplinary approaches focusing on serious mental illnesses and comorbid medical disorders. Training will incorporate research into disorders common across the lifespan, including neurodevelopmental disorders epitomized by psychoses and autism as well as neurodegenerative disorders (dementias). Diabetes mellitus (DM) will be the primary co-morbid medical disorder of interest, not only in view of the epidemic of hyperglycemia in India, but also because it influences the course of psychiatric disorders of interest. We will emphasize collaboration with (1) the Government of India through the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), wherein we will advocate for regulatory revisions to ease the current administrative burden on intervention researchers; (2) Indian institutions, to further expand the emphasis on implementation science wherein St John’s Medical College and Hospital will be the central training institution; (3) Indian and US-based mentors, to enable a team-based framework for addressing cross-disciplinary research; and (4) trainees, to support investigator-driven mental health research projects, especially those incorporating stigma reduction strategies and Research Domain criteria (RDoC). Our current proposal updates our decades of research capacity-building success by (a) emphasizing in-country leadership with our primary Indian collaborator as Contact PI; (b) expanding capacity-building work to focus on interdisciplinary, team-based approaches; and (c) broadening training to include senior-level mentors. We have, since 2004, built sustainable research capacity via continuous D43 grants, training 130 mental health researchers who published 264 peer-reviewed publications; facilitated a partnership with the ICMR; implemented a novel “Grantathon” model to attract and scale up research-based training; and supported our trainees in leveraging research grants exceeding $5,418,000 over the past 6 years. Our proposal is consistent with and complies with the Fogarty International Center’s Strategic plan.