Program Director/Principal Investigator (Last, First, Middle): Schooley, Robert T. This application requests a renewal of support for the UCSD ?Research in Infectious Disease? T32 Training Grant. The program, now in its 36th year, supports the career development of physician scientists who wish to pursue research training in infectious diseases and microbiology. We are requesting five years of ongoing support for the training of six postdoctoral trainees per year. The training program seeks to recruit a diverse group of trainees who have completed residencies in internal medicine or pediatrics and the first year of clinical training required for board certification in Adult or Pediatric Infectious Diseases. The goal of the T32 is to recruit trainees who wish to pursue rigorous research training that will place them on the pathway to productive, independent research careers. Because of the complexity of contemporary biomedical research and the highly competitive funding environment (especially for early career research scientists), we have extended the average duration of research support for our trainees to three years although the duration ranges from 2 ? 4 years. Based on an assessment of interests of potential trainees and of career development opportunities, the program has continued to evolve from the heavy focus on traditional ?wet lab? research in prior years to include patient oriented and global health research. Although the program is organized into three tracks (Microbial Pathogenesis, Patient Oriented and Global Health Research Training Tracks), multidisciplinary, multi-track training is the hallmark of the training program. The high level of commitment to each trainee in terms of training duration and intensity, coupled with the multidisciplinary character of the training experience has attracted outstanding applicants and has enabled them to be extremely successful in progressing to the next stages of development of careers as physician scientists. Based on a recently completed strategic planning process, we have put plans into place that we believe will allow the program to build on its strengths as we recruit additional faculty with new talents and skills, to strengthen our mentoring programs and to enhance our highly collaborative research environment. The overarching goal of the training program remains to prepare the next generation of physician scientists for highly productive careers in biomedical research with local, national and international impacts.