The Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) is pleased to announce that our National Library of Medicine (NLM) T15 Training Grant in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science has been renewed for another five years through 2027. The NLM training grant funds predoctoral (PhD) and postdoctoral trainees in the OHSU Biomedical Informatics Graduate Program.

The grant has been funded continuously at OHSU since 1992. This renewal marks the seventh consecutive five-year cycle of funding for this award. The grant’s completion of 30 years makes it the second-longest-running training grant at OHSU. The grant’s total funding over that time of $21,912,538 make it the largest training grant ever at OHSU.

Over 30 years, the grant has funded 131 trainees, including those currently in the program. Funding has included stipends, tuition, and other expenses for 46 predoctoral (PhD) and 61 postdoctoral students. Many of these trainees are among the 943 degrees and certificates that the OHSU Biomedical Informatics Graduate program has awarded since its inception in 1996. For part of its duration, the grant funded for two other types of trainees, librarians (8) and short-term positions (STTP) for internships for college undergraduates (16).

The picture shows the Principal Investigator of the Training Grant and Program Director William Hersh, M.D. with T15 and other trainees in one of the first in-person meetings, in the spring of 20022, since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

Associate Directors of the program include Karen Eden, Ph.D. and Shannon McWeeney, Ph.D. Dr. Hersh stated, “I am gratified for OHSU to receive another round of funding for this award that maintains our program as one of the most accomplished academic informatics programs in the country. This grant also has a great deal of personal importance to me. Not only has it been one of the key grants for our most accomplished students over the years, but I am a product of the NLM biomedical informatics training program myself, with my own career in the field launched when I was funded as a postdoc at Harvard University from 1987 to 1990.”