The Informatics Research Training program is a consortium of leading informatics laboratories and is supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Participants comprise a vibrant academic community of individuals with diverse backgrounds and broad-ranging interests, providing fellows with many opportunities for interaction and collaboration.

For United States citizens and permanent residents, fellowships provide stipend, tuition, and travel funds, and are typically for two to three year periods. Trainees are primarily associated with a particular research group, depending on interests. In addition, the program provides many opportunities for educational, research, and collegial/social interaction among the faculty, students, and fellows of the training sites through the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMI).

This figure illustrates the pathways for each type of trainee. Upon entrance to the program, postdoctoral trainees enroll in the MMSc program and also join one of our participating research laboratories. All pre- and postdoctoral trainees attend the research seminar each semester. Predoctoral trainees enroll in the PhD program and after completing all coursework and their qualifying exams, join one of the participating laboratories. Once in the research lab, trainees define their research projects and prepare and publicly defend a thesis proposal. Once the thesis is written, it is also publicly defended, and either the MMSc in Biomedical Informatics is granted or the PhD with concentration in Biomedical Informatics. The postdoctoral program is generally completed within two years. The predoctoral program can be completed in a minimum of three years (if the student already holds a Master’s degree) or, more usually, within five years. Short term trainees are college students that are selected to join a research lab for eight weeks during the summer, are assigned a mentor, define and conduct a research project, make a public presentation of their results and prepare a written report.