Career Development Program

The Career Development Program of the Mayo Clinic SPORE in Pancreatic Cancer has been exclusively targeted to junior faculty career development. In the next funding period, we propose to include both junior faculty and early mid-career faculty who will commit to mentored career development in translational pancreatic cancer research. One of the starkest realities facing the contemporary research community is the paucity of experienced investigators involved in translational pancreatic cancer research. In the past funding period, we had recognized the importance of attracting and nurturing individuals who would be committed to a pancreatic cancer research career. We successfully engaged and encouraged junior faculty, who have fulfilled the objective of this Program and the spirit of the SPORE program. Two of our past Career Development Awardees have developed successfully to become Leaders of full translational research projects in this current competing renewal application. Our goal will be extended to increase this pool and grow the community of experienced pancreatic cancer researchers by attracting early mid-career faculty as well. The core of senior pancreatic cancer researchers at Mayo Clinic, combined with highly productive investigators in other areas of cancer research, will form mentoring teams. Mayo Clinic has, by its seamless blend of patient care and basic and applied research facilities, an environment conducive to this type of mentored translational research. Mayo Clinic also has very competitive recruitment to faculty positions. There thus exists a continuous pool of outstanding scientists and clinicians (including talented female and minority investigators) who are early in their careers and who need exactly an impetus such as that offered by our SPORE's proposed Career Development Program to engage in translational research with a focus on pancreatic cancer. We will continue to implement our formal mechanisms for recruiting, selecting and evaluating awardees, and will ensure that awardees are integrated into the SPORE research environment. In all cases, we expect that recipients in the Career Development Program will build upon the resources allocated to them to develop independent funding in pancreatic cancer research.