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The Stanford NIH Graduate Training Program in Biotechnology trains talented students to be the next generation of interdisciplinary global biotechnology innovators, who will lead and invent the future with integrity and rigor.

Distinguished History

Established in 1991, the program has provided rich interdisciplinary training to more than 100 predoctoral students.  The long-term impact of this program is evidenced by the outstanding productivity of its trainees during their PhD programs and their distinguished careers as program alumni.

Unique Biotechnology Environment

Stanford provides an unusually rich biotechnology environment, with co-located, nationally ranked schools devoted to basic science, engineering, and medicine, and a strong industrial presence from the surrounding Bay Area. Stanford also has a world class business school and institute for design-based thinking which offers students opportunities to interact and engage with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, or to have impact on existing companies.

Interdisciplinary Training Program

The program fuses 36 investigators from 8 departments and 3 schools (Engineering, Medicine, and Humanities & Sciences) into a highly visible program which aims to deliver a rich, applications-oriented training experience that is uniquely focused on health-related biotechnology.

Our objective is to provide an enriched, multi-disciplinary training experience in biotechnology for students from a broad diversity of home departments and undergraduate majors. In doing so, we educate and enable students to excel in the discovery, development, and application of both basic and applied principles of biotechnology. We are also committed to training a diverse and balanced biotechnology workforce of the future, including significant representation of trainees from different backgrounds and experiences who are currently under-represented in the sciences and engineering.

Students are exposed to a broad variety of research approaches, experimental techniques, and innovative application areas through our biweekly meetings, research symposia, and coursework. They benefit from industrial internships and field trips and interactions with industrial managers and researchers. Additionally, the program includes professional development training in written and oral communication, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and innovation/design thinking.

Spotlight: Current Trainees

Melissa Nakamoto Biotech Training Program trainee

Melissa Nakamoto

"I applied to be in the Biotech Training Grant program because of the unique opportunity to do an industry internship while in graduate school..." 

Read Melissa's story

 

How mixing academia and industry opens doors in graduate school and beyond

“I’ve always thought that I would want to work in industry, but it’s hard to know for sure when I’ve really only worked in academic labs,” she says. Nakamoto worried that a conventional PhD programme wouldn’t give her the time and space to test the waters at an industry internship.

See the Biotechnology Training Program featured in Nature