Research Training Program

The Multidisciplinary Academic Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is designed to train outstanding scientists across the spectrum of biomedical research in the rheumatic diseases and launch the careers of those who wish to pursue a career as faculty of a medical school or university, or as full-time researchers in rheumatology.

The UCSF training program was initiated over 40 years ago and has had an outstanding track record of success. Our former trainees have gone on to leadership positions in academia, government and industry; include a member of the National Academy of Sciences and 3 Howard Hughes investigators; and have been recognized for their research accomplishments by numerous awards.

The program spans the three UCSF teaching institutions (the UCSF Parnassus Campus, Zuckerberg San Francisco General (ZSFG), the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC)) and the UCSF Mission Bay campus, which contains a number of world-renowned research institutes, including the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub.

The training program is led by Drs. Arthur Weiss, MD PhD and Jinoos Yazdany, MD MPH. Multidisciplinary training has been at the core of the UCSF rheumatology and clinical immunology training program since its inception, and as such, the faculty of the training program represent 6 departments (Medicine, Pediatrics, Dermatology, Bioengineering and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Microbiology and Immunology). The expertise of T32 faculty also reflects the astounding growth in informatics complexity and capacity, much of which is centered in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Trainees will have opportunities to perform work with leading clinical informaticists and bioinformaticists to drive advances in translational research and precision medicine. The program is committed to selecting highly qualified applicants from a very competitive applicant pool, providing cutting-edge training in research and analytic methods, the responsible conduct of research, grant writing, preparation of scientific manuscripts, and providing detailed career mentoring. Works-in-progress seminars, a robust research conference seminar series, pilot grant funding from the UCSF rheumatology division’s P30 Precision Medicine in Rheumatology (PREMIER) Center, and an integrated annual research retreat all contribute to a comprehensive training environment. We are deeply committed to strengthening the rheumatology research workforce nationally and ensuring that our trainees in both basic and clinical-translational sciences continue to receive outstanding training in new and evolving areas of research in a highly collaborative, transdisciplinary environment.