Overview
Visiting-Speakers Series and Training Grants Keep the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology State-of-the-Art
Miami, Florida, is a fast growing community of many languages and cultures, a cosmopolitan city that serves as a gateway to the Caribbean, the Atlantic seaboard, and South America. A vibrant music community and a wide variety of fine arts venues, museums, films, ballet, theater make the southern portion of Florida a popular destination not only for tourists and retirees, but also fans of artistic expression. Beaches, parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and lush tropical gardens dot the region, and the incredibly expansive Florida Everglades, the Florida Keys, and natural coral reefs are magnets for both scientists and sightseers.
The Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology maintains a broad visiting-speaker seminar series in addition to its course offerings. Various scientists of international standing present research findings to groups of professors and graduate students, and these distinguished visitors typically spend a day in informal discussions with students in the pharmacology graduate program. The seminar series is open to students from other departments, and the Medical School also sponsors visiting scientists of particular eminence.
Training grants are an important source of funding for research and teaching. For example, supported by a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Cardiovascular Pharmacology Training Grant, a new study is investigating the use of bone marrow stem cells for cardiac repair. There are training grant faculty members in pharmacology, medicine, cardiology, and cell biology, and students to have the opportunity for training in specific cardiovascular techniques and for learning about the new findings in the cardiovascular field. Grants are funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Graduate Studies In Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology Include Cutting-Edge Research Opportunities With Top Scientists
With its historically strong commitment to establishing an uncompromised level of excellence in research and education, the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology avails itself of every possible method for instruction, research, and discovery. A broad, active research program spans a wide range of interests from molecular pharmacology, such as the mechanisms of cardiovascular and skeletal muscle contraction, to the latest frontiers in cellular pharmacology. With some fifteen different research groups to choose from, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows cooperate to create an innovative and stimulating atmosphere for cutting-edge research. Every possible research topic in molecular pharmacology and cellular pharmacology can be addressed with state-of-the-art equipment and facilities.
Students that are taking graduate studies in pharmacology receive vigorous, rigorous training in molecular, cellular, and integrative pharmacology as a means of establishing a foundation for their dissertation research. The first two years of graduate studies in pharmacology are spent working in a minimum of three faculty laboratories with the guidance of a mentor chosen from among the 30 graduate program faculty members. Students enjoy an unusually broad and diverse selection of research opportunities that range from cardiovascular pharmacology, the regulation of gene expression, and membrane biophysics to cellular communication and signal transduction, synapse formation, muscle excitability/contractility, and neuronal growth. Graduate studies in pharmacology truly offer the best of both learning paradigms, the mastery of an expansive and evolving area of scholarship plus the focused, narrowly defined objectives of cutting-edge research conducted in an environment built specifically for world-class science and education.
World-Class Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology Faculty Members Use the Finest Possible Research Facilities
An institution that hopes to remain on the leading edge of both research and teaching must have a solid, talented faculty. The faculty members of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology are not simply first-rate researchers and scientists, but dedicated instructors, as well. They know that there is far more to educating intelligent, motivated graduate students than directing lectures and reading assignments at them. The personal mentoring that takes place between the department's professors and graduate students is a critically important ingredient in the graduate education process.
The school¿s well-trained, well-respected and well-funded faculty has diverse research interests that range from the regulation of cardiac growth and the cellular and genetic mechanisms of heart failures and cardiomyopathies to the crucially important studies of cancer and cell growth control. Among other leading-edge research projects are those involving morphogenesis and cytoskeletal dynamics, the structure and function of membrane receptors, axon growth and synapse formation, genomics, bioinformatics, and the discovery, identification, and definition of natural therapeutics.
The Basic Science Building houses 30,000 square feet of departmental research facilities, offices, and core work areas. Extensive cooperation with other science departments and programs, as well as with such clinical departments as cardiology and neurology, further expands the number of research facilities available to graduate pharmacology students. In addition to extensive periodical and monograph collections, the medical library also has first-rate computer facilities for accessing electronic journals, web publications, Medline, Current Contents, and the various scientific resources of the Internet.
