The Colorado PRIME (PRograms to Increase Mentoring of Early-stage investigators in health-related research) program: Health AI and Data Science in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Disease: Application and Bioethics (HARP-BIO) connects scholars with top faculty mentors and resources at the highly ranked Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, and the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Scholars will use multiple omics platforms and learn the ethical use of data sciences, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to address how coding decisions affect data outputs that may result in or amplify health disparities in pulmonary and/or cardiovascular diseases.
Career development activities will be complemented with behavioral and social science cognitive interventions to enhance success in academic medicine.
Scholars will participate in monthly workshops that will provide mentorship in grant writing, setting up a lab, dissemination or research findings, and career development advice.
Basic and physician scientists are under-represented in specialties related to AI and the ethical use of data science. One explanation is that AI and machine learning are fairly new technologies and many in health-related fields are uncertain about how to use these in an ethical fashion.
To address some of these issues, the CU Anschutz Medical Campus “PRIME Academy: Health AI and Data Science in Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Disease: Application and Bioethics (HARP-BIO)” will integrate comprehensive formal instruction in:
- Multiple omics platforms (proteomics, populomics, genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics) and bioinformatics, with an emphasis on ethical use of data sciences, machine learning, and artificial intelligence
- How coding decisions based on the operator may influence the output of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease data and increase health disparities
- Career development tools including grant writing with a focus on drafting a specific aims page, a grant budget, using rhetorical patterns of writing, how to negotiate, how to mentor/be mentored, and other tools for junior faculty
- An additional level of engagement distinct from the mentor-mentee relationship. We will implement the concept of academic “coaches” and use 2 levels of academic advisement, the traditional mentor/mentee, followed by an academic coach who complements and enhances the mentors’ role. The coach will help scholars navigate the intricacies of academia, using group activities and social science approaches such as communities of practice and cultural capital
- Best practices in mentoring so they can understand the challenges junior faculty members entering academia face
We have outstanding faculty members who have a track record of mentoring and research in omics platforms of cardiovascular and/or pulmonary diseases and bioethics, both directly relevant to the mission of the NHLBI. Furthermore, we bring together a team of academic coaches whose main objective is the success of junior scientists in academia.