Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR)

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Training Program

CAIR's postdoctoral research fellowship training program is a National Research Service Award (NRSA) training program that is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. Three postdoctoral fellows are accepted every other year for a two-year period of training. Candidates for CAIR's postdoctoral fellowship program must receive their doctorate prior to beginning training, and individuals with postgraduate experience who now wish to focus their research in HIV prevention areas are encouraged to apply. It is anticipated that postdoctoral fellows will hold doctorates in the behavioral or social science, public health, nursing, or medical fields.

CAIR's postdoctoral research fellowship training program emphasizes the following key elements:

• Supervised and independent research mentorship by CAIR faculty members. A close, ongoing research mentorship experience with a senior faculty investigator is the "heart" of CAIR's fellowship program. Postdoctoral fellows are integrated into ongoing research projects where they receive individualized research training. In addition to working closely with a primary mentor, CAIR fellows have the opportunity to collaborate on multiple projects with CAIR's internationally-known faculty and to develop their own independent research projects.
   
• Fellowship training conferences and seminars. During the first year of the program, postdoctoral fellows participate in weekly seminars on HIV behavioral research and in foundation areas important to the development of successful careers in health behavior research. Fellows also participate in research ethics seminars and in CAIR's conference series, which brings to the Center nationally-respected HIV prevention researchers and influential members of the local HIV prevention community.
   
• Availability of enrichment courses. Fellows may elect to take advantage of advanced courses and seminars offered at the Medical College of Wisconsin or at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in areas related to their scientific and educational interests.
   
• Development of research papers and grant applications. CAIR fellows receive one-on-one mentoring in the preparation of journal articles and other research publications. Each fellow is expected, and will be guided, to establish a record of scholarly activity in an area of research interest reflected by the authorship of scientific research papers and the preparation of an NIH-format grant application. Most fellows publish between two and six journal articles while at CAIR. 
   

CAIR's Research Team
CAIR is a multidisciplinary center with 12 full-time faculty, additional affiliated faculty investigators, and a support staff of nearly 30 project coordinators, research associates, and other personnel. Based in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine of the Medical College of Wisconsin, CAIR brings together a team of investigators from a variety of disciplines including clinical, health, social, quantitative, and educational psychology; public health and epidemiology; biostatistics; psychiatry; ethics; infectious diseases; public health law; health anthropology; and other fields.

CAIR faculty and staff have offices in a residential neighborhood near downtown Milwaukee and overlooking Lake Michigan. CAIR's facilities include conference and meeting rooms; an on-site HIV behavioral research library; and excellent computer resources. The main campus of the Medical College of Wisconsin, located about eight miles from CAIR's offices, has all of the facilities and specialty resources that one would expect to find at a nationally-ranked medical school. The Medical College of Wisconsin, with an enrollment of approximately 800 medical students, is one of the largest private medical schools in the country.