Requirements

NIH-based training grants are becoming increasingly competitive, and thus it is critical that students appointed to them make a long-term commitment to carrying out research in the relevant subject area. All training grants have requirements which must be fulfilled to justify the financial support of the student (tuition, fees, and stipend).

For the environmental statistics training grant, these include the following:

Cognate: Trainees must complete their cognate in an area related to environmental health. The specific courses and theme should be developed by the student along with their advisor and the training grant director; all cognates must be approved as part of the final program by the Director of Graduate Studies. Some examples of cognates completed by past funded students include Environmental Exposure Assessment, Global Environmental Health, Environmental Cardiology, Nutrition x Environment Interactions, Gene x Environment Interactions, and Environmental Policy.

Coursework: There are no specific courses required for this training grant other than the cognate as described above, but trainees should complete coursework that supports their biostatistical research in environmental health applications, which may include courses in measurement error, gene environment interactions, or spatial data analysis. Completion of training or coursework in reproducible research may also be required by NIH training grant requirements.

Summer Project: After their first year in the PhD program, trainees must complete a summer project that has clear ties to environmental statistics. Projects may be methodological in nature, but then at least one application to an environmental dataset should be included. All summer project proposals should be discussed with and must be approved by the Training Grant Director. The Training Grant Director may be able to help students identify appropriate summer projects.

Seminars/Working Groups: Trainees must attend the Environmental Statistics Working Group meeting, which typically convenes once per month during the academic year. In some years, short research retreats are held for the Environmental Statistics Training grant and these should be attended by all students funded by this grant.

Dissertation: Trainees should have dissertation topics which are either directly related to biostatistical methodology in environmental health studies, or which include applications to environmental datasets. Proposals for incorporating environmental applications in student dissertation work should be included as part of the oral qualifying exam. Even if students are no longer funded on this grant during the period of their dissertation research, it is expected that support over the first 2-3 years in the PhD program will be acknowledged by focusing on an environmental health application in biostatistics.

Progress Report: Trainees will be asked to provide an annual progress report including details on how their training relates to environmental statistics, for the annual NIH progress reports.