Greetings from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. Our new name reflects the very generous donations we’ve received over the past decade that have enabled us to build a new Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital and recruit many new faculty (Read more here). Clinical and translational research has been growing at a terrific rate to match our long-standing strengths in the basic sciences – it’s a great time to be an MSTP student here!

As we do each year, we welcomed a terrific group of entering students into the first-year class. Coming from the west (Berkeley), mid-west (Carnegie Mellon), south (Duke), the north (Brandeis University) and even Stony Brook, the group is academically strong, averaging 94% on the MCAT exam, a 3.83 GPA, two years of prior research experience, and publications ranging from Oncotarget to Science. Our current students are doing great too, winning too many awards to cite and publishing high-impact papers before going off to their choice of research-oriented residencies.

This being a training-grant renewal year, I’d like to thank all of the alumni who responded to our survey request and encourage those who didn’t to do so (it will only take a few minutes! [ link to survey]). It’s always anxiety-provoking to renew the grant – but the program is in good shape and we should do fine.

Changes this past year include welcoming two new administrators to the program, Ms. Alison Gibbons and Ms. Alvarez-Buonaiuto, as well as two new Associate Directors, Drs. Helen Hsieh and Carine Maurer. Both are MSTP graduates, Helen from our program, and Carine from the Tri-state Cornell, Rockefeller, Sloan-Kettering program. Being relatively recent graduates, Helen and Carine are able to provide recent perspective on the MSTP career and training path to our students, and in particular add to the effort we’ve made this year to address issues facing women pursuing this path, ranging from training in communication and negotiating skills (through a workshop from our Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science Center designed specifically for our female students) to a presentation at our retreat on implicit bias from an international expert on the topic and an evening seminar on professionalism delivered by an MSTP graduate from the Dartmouth SoM who has taken this on as a career mission! Compared to prior eras, MSTP training now entails rigor and reproducibility topics, quantitative science, grant-writing, ethics, and professionalism – and as well of course strong science!

I hope you enjoy this newsletter – the students and Associate Directors have done a bang-up job with this first issue and we hope that it helps us to stay in touch with all of you and vice-versa –

With best wishes for your own careers and success –

Mike Frohman, Director