Graduate Students

Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences

The Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences has many world class researchers studying diseases of global importance including HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, as well as noncommunicable diseases in global settings. Please visit the Graduate School website for more information.

Weill Cornell Department of Microbiology and Immunology

The faculty within the Department of Microbiology and Immunology conduct research on many diseases of global importance. The faculty pursue diverse projects but share the concern of how genomes regulate themselves and each other. Our interest in genetic information spans the spectrum from how information can be extracted, understood and applied at the genomic level, to how gene products interact at the atomic level. Telomerases, polymerases, recombinases, ligases, and the machinery that processes RNA offer powerful experimental tools for diverse fields of medical biology. Further, they are fundamental to the survival of all genomes, and represent potential points of attack against genomes that invade. Immunology is the study of the ability of one genome to detect and reject another. Hosts and pathogens shape each other’s evolution, with the immune system as the interface. Study of their interaction lets the accumulated experimental record of evolution serve as a roadmap to significant features of each. Computational biology opens new windows in all these fields.

The Weill Cornell Center for Global Health laboratory is on the 11th floor of the Belfer Research Building, adjacent to laboratories of other faculty members in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. The laboratory is used for clinical and translational research related to ongoing global health projects. Please see the Department's website for more information.

Weill Cornell Masters of Science Degree Program: Global Health Track

The mission of the Weill Cornell MS Program in clinical epidemiology and health services research is to train physicians and other experienced health professionals to design and conduct methodologically rigorous and scientifically sound clinical research in a variety of settings.

Program Director: Mary E. Charlson MD, the William T. Foley Distinguished Professor in Medicine

Global Health Track

The goal of the Global Health Track in the MS Program is to train a cadre of health care leaders who will direct clinical and public health programs outside of the United States, who will conduct cutting edge clinical research, who will teach the next generation of health care workers, and who will address global health inequalities. The schedule of the Weill Cornell MS Program has been specifically adapted so that physicians and other experienced health professionals from other countries can attend didactic training in New York during intensive blocks and then return to their home country in the interim periods to conduct their mentored thesis research and continue their clinical and teaching responsibilities.
The novel structure of the Global Health Track in the MS Program offers several advantages. Students receive didactic training and mentorship from world-renowned faculty from Weill Cornell Medical College. International trainees remain engaged in their own country, minimizing risk of “brain-drain”. By taking intensive block courses and returning to conduct their thesis research, candidates remain an integral part of their home institution and can continue with clinical and teaching responsibilities. Thesis research is responsive to the needs of the population in the trainee’s own country and builds a foundation for continued post-graduate investigation. Graduates of the MS Program are prepared in a seamless fashion to assume faculty leadership positions at their home institution.

Eligibility

Candidates for the Global Health Track must hold an MD, have received post-graduate clinical training, and have a faculty position in their home country. We will consider exceptional candidates who hold other health care degrees (RN, DVM, PharmD, etc). Candidates will be recruited from international sites with clinical and research programs affiliated with Weill Cornell (e.g. Haiti, India, Brazil, Tanzania). We will also admit a small number of US physicians with an interest in global health who plan to conduct their thesis research abroad. US and international candidates will receive the same education and must satisfy all the requirements for the MS degree.

Time Line and Requirements

The time to earn the degree is two to three years. Candidates will spend five to six months in New York receiving didactic and technical training and the remainder of the time at their home institution conducting research for the thesis. Intensive Block courses (1-2 months) will be offered in NYC in July-August, October, and March of Year 1, and in January of Year 2. The required THESIS will be based on field research conducted under the mentorship of Weill Cornell and the international site faculty members. The research must be responsive to the needs of the international site with primary data collected abroad. Each candidate will have a primary Weill Cornell methodologic mentor, as well as mentors in their specific discipline; they will also have a team of secondary mentors including: advisors with specific technical skills (statistics, health economics, laboratory science, etc), faculty from the foreign institution, and Weill Cornell faculty based at the international site. Technical training required for the candidate’s thesis (laboratory skills, computer, and statistical methods) may be provided during an additional month in NYC.

For additional information and an application form please contact:
Weill Cornell Master of Science Program in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services Research

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Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Global Health Center for Global Health
420 East 70th Street, 4th Floor, Suite LH-455 New York, NY 10021 Phone: (646) 962-8140 Fax: (646) 962-0285