DCRI Fellowship Program Description [pdf]

The DCRI has a long-standing commitment to train fellows and junior faculty in order to develop the next generation of clinical researchers. This commitment has evolved into the creation of a comprehensive and unique fellowship training program.

Faculty members associated with the program include clinician researchers, biostatisticians, health economists, and health services researchers. Currently, the DCRI comprises over 900 employees, including more than 100 faculty from all disciplines.

The DCRI Research Fellowship Training Program has doubled in size since 2004 and currently includes approximately 30 postdoctoral fellows and medical students each year. Postdoctoral fellows typically complete two years of training.

The DCRI offers a living laboratory for investigators of the future by combining faculty interests in specific research questions with the multifaceted environment needed to do outcome-based studies. The program features:

• On-going and direct mentorship from DCRI research faculty.


• Integration into on-going clinical trials and outcomes research projects.


• Access for analyses of numerous databases from clinical trials and registries.


• Regular dissemination of new advances in clinical research with a variety of educational modalities.

Multidisciplinary Interactions

A critical component of the training program is the interaction between the clinician researchers and statisticians.

The philosophy of the training program is that the most successful investigators will be able to combine superior knowledge in their field of clinical specialty with quantitative principles in an interactive, teamwork-oriented environment.

Fellows also have the opportunity to participate in coursework for the Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP) to obtain a Masters in Health Sciences in Clinical Research during their research fellowship at DCRI. This program offers in-depth training regarding biostatistics, clinical research design and methodology, cost-effectiveness research, and health economics. More details are available at http://crtp.mc.duke.edu/ .

Fellowship Participants

The DCRI’s training program this year includes 23 fellows from eight countries (in addition to the United States) in five therapeutic disciplines, including cardiovascular, infectious disease, nephrology, pediatrics, and gastroenterology/ hepatology.