A unique fellowship between the Yale School of Public Health and the National Cancer Institute has been renewed for another five years, giving students at YSPH the chance to pursue their Ph.D. degrees in Washington with access to mentors and research in both places.
Pre–doctoral students accepted into the Yale University–National Cancer Institute (NCI) Partnership Training Program learn to evaluate links between lifestyle and cancer—especially nutritional, environmental and occupational factors—and their interactions with genetic predispositions. Both Yale and NCI investigators mentor the students, who receive Ph.D. degrees from Yale upon completion of the program.
Susan Mayne, professor in the division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology and a principal investigator of the training program, calls the fellowship a “valuable option” for YSPH students, providing access to large cohort studies and the most current genetic information. “In some cases, these are the best datasets in the world to answer a particular research question in epidemiology and genetics of cancer,” said Mayne. The partnership also allows YSPH faculty to collaborate with NIH investigators in shared areas of research, drawing on the same databases.
Steve Moore, M.P.H. ’04, Ph.D. ’07, was Yale’s first graduate of the program. In reviewing his options for a Ph.D. program, he said, “I quickly realized that the Yale–NCI Fellowship offered the best combination of high–quality instruction and high–quality research opportunities.” Moore, who investigates the relationship between sedentary lifestyle and cancer risk, said a key advantage of NCI is “the unparalleled access to rich resources.” The comprehensive database and network of collaborators “is helping me to investigate questions that no one else is able to address,” he says.
Stella Koutros, who received her Ph.D. last spring, was honored recently by the American College of Epidemiology for her research on the links between pesticides and cancer. Now a postdoctoral fellow at the NCI, she continues to work in the areas of occupational and environmental cancer epidemiology. Koutros hopes to explore several gene–environment interactions that might explain the increased risk of prostate cancer in the study’s cohort.
Dean Hosgood, M.P.H. ‘05, Ph.D. ‘08, traces his interest in NCI to his courses in Environmental Health Science. “For most carcinomas, the exposure is chronic and oftentimes unknown,” he said. “My desire is to identify these biologically plausible exposures and have them successfully regulated to safe levels in the ambient environment, the home, and the workplace.” Hosgood has focused on lung cancer risk and indoor air pollution, working to build on evidence of genetic susceptibility to lung cancer in populations with indoor fuel–combustion exposures. The NCI has allowed him to follow two studies in China, where non–smoking women face a high lung cancer incidence. Hosgood now conducts research into occupational exposure to chemicals.
“The Yale–NCI program was tremendously appealing to me because it combined the coursework and education of a premier university with the NCI, whose cutting–edge research is literally driving the fields of cancer and molecular epidemiology,” he said. “My mentors have been not only dedicated and supportive educators; they have evolved into valuable collaborators and friends.”