The UMass CBI program, founded in 1995 with a small number of NIH Traineeships, has always aimed to enhance training of a much larger number of students. Thus we are very proud of our network of over 143 CBI Alumni who completed the CBI curriculum over the past 25 years.
Impact. While we currently have 8 NIH-funded traineeships, over the past 15 years the program has consistently averaged ~60 CBI Trainees following the curriculum, demonstrating our high impact on training and our commitment to inclusivity. By seeding many other campus initiatives, including IALS and BTP, CBI has a major impact on the growth of interdisciplinary science on this campus.
The CBI community is highly collaborative: at the start of 2020, CBI Faculty funding included $1.3M in current year direct cost for collaborative research grants, and collaborative projects among the CBI Faculty have led to over 112 joint publications.
For the 2015-2019 period, all training grant eligible students graduating from CBI labs have an average time-to-degreeof 5.8 years (compared to 5.8 years for Chemistry and 6.3 years for MCB, the two programs which provide the greatest number of CBI students). Students from under-represented groups graduate in a similar time, averaging 5.7 years.
For students who entered in 2008-2012, PhD completion ratesfrom CBI labs are 88% for all students and 89% for students from under-represented groups (compare to 74% over the same period for our five participating graduate programs).
Publication rates.For 74 representative TGE (training grant eligible) students who completed their PhD degrees in CBI labs in 2010-2019, each student published an average of 5.6 total papers and 2.4 first-author papers, with very similar publication rates for students from under-represented groups (5.5 total papers and 1.9 first-author papers). Very few students graduated with no first-author publications: 8% (6) of all students and 13% (1) of students from under-represented groups.
Career Placement. Of the 46 TGE students who completed PhD degrees in CBI labs in 2015-2019, 45 (98%) are employed in research-intensive or research-related jobs and one is on the job market. These recent CBI alumni work in a range of positions and sectors including 15 (33%) postdocs in academia, industry, or government labs, 23 (50%) employed in industry, 2 in government research, 2 in tenure-track academic positions, and 3 in academic teaching, science, or administrative positions.