UAB Heersink School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) is the recipient of a 2025 NIH-funded Institutional National Research Service Award (T32). The T32 grant will provide additional training opportunities for prospective students, expanding the total number of supported student slots from 18 to 20. The increase speaks to the success of the program over its near 40-year history. With the expansion of the grant, the MSTP aims to maintain its current yearly matriculation of 10-12 students and seeks to grow that total in the future.

The MSTP has been funded by the NIH since 1992 and has seen substantial growth since 2018, with an increase in matriculants from eight students per year to 12 students per year in 2024. The MSTP’s mission is to train the next generation of physician-scientists to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and treatment. More than 200 students have successfully completed the program.

Alongside the expansion of the program, Talene Yacoubian, M.D., Ph.D., who became co-director of the MSTP in 2018 and has served as the director since 2021, will serve as the assistant dean of the Medical Scientist Training Program.

“We are excited to have received additional funding from the NIH to support our physician scientist trainees at UAB,” said Yacoubian. “Investment in physician scientist training is more important than ever with the explosive growth in scientific understanding of disease. We need more people who are trained in both clinical medicine and research in order to translate these scientific discoveries into better and more effective therapies. This increase funding from NIH along with strong institutional support from the medical school is critical for our ability to fully support our students, particularly during challenging times for the scientific community.”