Emory’s Udall Center educates, trains and provides career enhancement opportunities to scientists and physicians from diverse backgrounds who are interested in Parkinson’s disease research. The expertise of Emory Udall Center investigators in teaching, mentoring and career development, combined with the unique institutional research and training opportunities at Emory provide Udall Center trainees with an excellent foundation for developing their professional career. Several educational activities are particularly noteworthy:
Most of the Center’s educational activities happen at the ‘bench’, i.e., early-career investigators learn to conduct research by doing it in a supervised laboratory environment under the guidance of one or several of the Center’s PIs. We offer mentored positions for undergraduate students, PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty members.
In addition, the Center’s seminar series provides a venue for Parkinson disease researchers, internal and external to Emory, to discuss their work and generates conversations among the attendees that may lead to future collaborations.
Another educational activity is the Center’s weekly journal club, focused on Parkinson’s disease, as well as basal ganglia physiology and anatomy, which is hosted at the Emory National Primate Research Center (and via ZOOM). The journal club is attended by Udall Center faculty, students and postdoctoral trainees, as well as other interested researchers. The Journal Club is also remotely attended by investigators at Vanderbilt University, the Van Andel Research Institute, Medical University of South Carolina, University of Pittsburgh and University of Minnesota.
The Udall Center’s pilot project program also helps the Center to accomplish its educational mission, by providing early career investigators with funding for pilot projects that will help them to generate preliminary data for larger external grants. The pilot project process are also an excellent opportunity for junior investigators to hone their grant-writing skills, and if the funding is awarded to them, get experience with post-award management of project activities.
Finally, as an important educational activity, the Center provides clinical experiences to non-clinical students and fellows, through participation in the aforementioned journal club, and the opportunity to spend time with (“shadow”) clinic faculty seeing patients with movement disorders.