Through its funding of the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), the National Institutes of Health supports nearly 1,000 M.D./Ph.D. trainees each year in the U.S., including several at Einstein. The program’s stated purpose is to build the physician-scientist workforce, but there are no comprehensive studies evaluating career outcomes of the program’s graduates.

Following up on research they published in 2018, Myles Akabas, M.D., Ph.D., and co-author Lawrence “Skip” Brass at University of Pennsylvania, have provided more detailed analysis of MSTP graduates’ career paths. In two new related studies, published online on October 3 in JCI Insight, Drs. Akabas and Brass analyzed data from a 2015 survey of more than 10,000 graduates of 80 M.D./Ph.D. programs. In the first study, the authors found that residency specialty choice heavily influenced the likelihood that MSTP graduates would achieve an active research career. Their second study found that women and minorities attain careers similar to those attained by males and non-minority graduates, although with a lower likelihood of NIH funding.  Dr. Akabas is professor of physiology & biophysics, of medicine, and in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, and the director of Einstein’s MSTP.