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Career Development (K) Awards

Individual Career Development Awards (federally funded)

Over the past ten years, the junior faculty in the Department have received a total of 20 individual K01, K99 or K23 Career Development awards for translational topics that span from pediatric to adult ages; from basic laboratory science, psychiatric genetics and neuroimaging, to clinical trials and health services research; and from eating disorders and mood disorders to psychotic disorders. Ten of these awards are currently active.

Institutional Career Development Awards

Junior faculty have also been successful in receiving competitive institutional career development awards selected by the School of Medicine. In the last five years, three junior faculty have been recipients of KL2 awards, Mentored Clinical Scientist Development Program Awards that provide support to an institution for the development of indepen­dent clinical scientists. Further, two junior faculty have been recipients of “Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health” (BIRCWH) K12 awards, another federally funded program developed to promote the career development of independent researchers who focus on women’s health issues by pairing scholars with senior investi­gators in a mentored, interdisciplinary scientific environment.

Current Department of Psychiatry Training Grants

Department faculty currently direct a number of training grants focused on developing the next generation of research scientists, including 17 training grants within the UNC School of Medicine.

  • Dr. Joseph Piven runs a T32 Postgraduate Research Training grant in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities that provides post-doctoral research training for MD and PhD researchers, which develops researchers with expertise in both the biological basis and clinical manifestations of neuro-developmental disorders. This broad-based and integrated perspective enables research­ers to better relate across disciplines and maximizes the potential for major research advances in understanding the pathogenesis and treatment of these disorders.
  • Dr. Fulton Crews directs a T32 program, “Molecular and Cellular Alcohol Research Training”, that promotes the development of promising PhD postdoctoral fellows as independent investigators and future faculty members who will investigate the patho­genesis of alcoholism and alcohol abuse using modern molecular medicine techniques.
  • Dr. David Rubinow and Dr. Susan Girdler direct the “Postdoctoral Training in Reproductive Mood Disorders.” This program develops researchers with expertise in both the biological basis and clinically relevant (predictive) phenotypes of reproductive mood disorders (perinatal depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and perimeno­pausal depression). This two-year training program is for MD, PhD, and MD/PhD trainees. Training involves a broad-based and integrative perspective, involving not only psychiatry but cardiology and genetics, endocrinology, neuroscience, and obstetrics/ gynecology.
  • Dr. John Gilmore co-directs a T32 program, “Biostatistics and Mental Health Neuroimaging and Genomics Training Grant”, with Dr. Jason Fine in the Department of Biostatistics. This program provides innovative training in the analysis of “big data” related to genetic and imaging studies in psychiatric disorders.
  • Further, Department faculty participate as mentors in other federally-funded train­ing programs within the University’s Allied Health Sciences including the Women’s Reproductive Health Research (WRHR) Career Development Program (Drs. Bulik and Rubinow), the Nutrition Training Grant (Bulik), the National Research Service Award in Genetics (Drs. Sullivan and Tarantino), Training in Research of Drug Abuse (Drs. Johns and Morrow), Predoctoral Training in Addiction Science (Dr. Johns), the Medical Scientist Training Program (Drs. Belger, Bulik, Gilmore, Girdler, Kato, McElligott, Morrow, Piven, Robinson, Styner, and Sullivan), Neurosciences Predoctoral Training at UNC-CH (Drs. Belger, Besheer, Crews, Dichter, Frohlich, Gilmore, Johns, Morrow, Pedersen, Piven, Stuber, Frohlich, Dichter, Hodge, Santelli, Robinson, Rubinow, Tarantino, and Sullivan), Predoctoral Training in Pharmacological Sciences (Drs. Morrow, Breese, Crews, and Hodge), the UNC Clinical and Translational Science Award (Drs. Gaynes and Jarskog), UNC Predoctoral Training Program in Bioinformatics/Computational Biology (Dr. Frohlich), Human Development: Interdisciplinary Research Training (Drs. Dichter, Piven), UNC Research Fellowship in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Drs. Dichter, Belger, Bluth, Frohlich, Gaynes, Girdler, Piven, Rosenstein), and Research Training in Mental Health Services and Systems (Dr. Gaynes).