NIH MD/PHD Partnership Training Program

Welcome! The NIH MD/PhD Partnership Training Program coordinates the training, activities and funding for MD/PhD students who conduct research in the intramural research program of the NIH in preparation for a career as physician-scientists in basic or translational biomedical research. The program fosters innovative and interdisciplinary Ph.D. partnerships that are often accelerated in nature. The program takes advantage of the unique resources at the NIH’s main campus in Bethesda, MD, one of the world’s premier biomedical research institutions, and the NIH clinical research center, the nation’s largest hospital and outpatient facility devoted entirely to clinical research.

Because NIH does not grant the M.D. or Ph.D., this program is a partnership with participating U.S. Medical schools for the M.D. phase of training. Participating schools that are recipients of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) grant accept the funding that we are able to offer through the MSTP to support the medical school years of training. An NIH scientist serves as a mentor or co-mentor for the Ph.D. portion of your training. Students earn the Ph.D. most often through one of the sixteen NIH institutional Graduate Partnerships Programs. Currently, most NIH MD/PhD students are in the NIH-Oxford Cambridge Scholars Program or the Karolinska Institute Neuroscience Partnership, whose interdisciplinary Ph.D. training and accelerated research-intensive curricula are a good match for MD/PhD students. A significant number of students entering MD/PhD training after the preclinical years of medical school enroll through individual graduate partnership agreements with their medical schools, where the NIH lab serves as the Ph.D. thesis lab for a degree obtained from their medical school.

The program admits students directly after college through a process that parallels applications to university MD/PhD programs. We also accept students currently enrolled in medical school or those who are current NIH Graduate Partnership Program students. If you are interested in applying, please visit the Prospective Students section and select the relevant training pathway to learn more. You can also read about some of the discoveries that our current students and recent graduates have made. Feel free to ask our students more about the program, contact us directly, or join our mailing list.

Prospective and active students can visit the Current Students section to read about program timelines and policies, the exciting clinical and other activities we have put together for NIH M.D./Ph.D. students during their research years, internal and external student meetings, and funding opportunities.

You can look up the program directors and staff and find other useful information in Contacts and Links.

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