Whether you are interested in pursuing a research career or becoming a master clinician or educator, exposure to research during your training prepares you to be an independent critical thinker of the medical evidence. As such, research is an integral part of our Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, complementing your clinical training with dedicated instruction in research. The goal of integrating the research component of your training into our fellowship program is to introduce essential techniques and skills that are necessary not only to critically evaluate medical literature but also to independently conduct basic, translational, and clinical research in critical care and pulmonary and sleep related diseases.

For those who seek to pursue a researched-focused career, we provide fully funded opportunities for an additional research year (or years) to focus on advanced projects and/or to lay the foundation needed to develop a career as a physician–scientist. During your fellowship, you also have several opportunities to broaden your exposure to epidemiology, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and state-of-the-art laboratory developments that are rapidly becoming essential to the practice of medicine in the 21st century. Additionally, there are formal and didactic components that can be taken as individual courses or connected to pursue a master’s degree with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Our research program occurs over the course of our three-year clinical fellowship. Preparation for your capstone project begins in your first year, as you narrow down your interests to one area, which may be anything from asthma to lung cancer or critical care. Our division conducts research in several areas that may be of interest to you. A core research curriculum is also a valuable part of your training.

Fellowship Research Project

Our faculty members advise and mentor you as you develop your research interests and project. Because we believe that you work harder when you are truly interested, we provide you with different opportunities to explore your research interests and passions.

First Year

At the beginning of your first year, you are assigned a research advisor, who introduces you to the divisional scientific activities and connects you to potential mentors. At that time, we also hold a ‘Research Primer’ session to introduce the overall research curriculum and the research landscape at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. In fall you attend two half-day ‘Research Introduction’ sessions, where you meet research faculty and junior faculty who have experience conducting basic, translational, or clinical research careers. In addition to learning about the activities in our division’s laboratories, you receive advice on how to choose a mentor, how to pursue a research career, concepts of grant design, mastership program opportunities available, and how to approach prerequisites for projects, such as investigational review board (IRB) and institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) application approvals.

In the spring of your first year, you choose a research mentor. Your decision may be based on how well you feel you fit within the research programs available or on development. If you don’t have a predefined interest already, you and our program faculty will work together to identify a mentor based on your clinical area of interest, a mentor’s interest in you, or a mentor’s resources. The mentor can work in our division or elsewhere within NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Then, first-year fellows submit proposals for research projects to a research committee, and a dedicated project is finalized by the end of the first year.

Second Year

During your second year, you begin engaging in the development and execution of the research project you elected. You are asked to present an overview of your area of study at a research conference. We encourage you to present your research project for possible submission as an abstract or for a poster or oral presentation to national meetings, such as those of the American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society, Aspen Lung Conference, or other international meetings. Abstract and presentation proposals are thoroughly reviewed before submission. We also encourage you to develop your presentation into a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.

In addition, the second-year class has dedicated research workshops on topics including basic statistics, how to perform basic analyses and visualization of data, how to perform sample-size calculations with power analysis, etc. This workshop is given by several members of our research faculty, and it is given in a hands-on format with a small class where we can tailor the learning experience based on each fellow’s level of comfort with the topic.

Third Year

Your third year is devoted to activities in your research project under your mentor’s direction. This is the year when you also have less clinical responsibility. Day-to-day activities include basic laboratory work, clinical trial work, or biostatistical analytic work. During this year, you are expected to strive for publication in a high-quality, peer-reviewed journal. Fellows interested in a research career also have the opportunity of applying for grants and advanced research fellowships. These individuals will have the option of additional career advice counseling by our full-time research faculty.

If you are interested in an academic career, arranging one or more additional years of research may be possible. Please discuss this possibility with your research advisor, division chief, and fellowship director as early as possible. You are encouraged to apply for relevant awards and fellowships, including support from the Physician–Scientist Training Program and training programs available through our institution (T32s), as well as to consider a master of science degree in clinical investigation through NYU Langone’s Clinical and Translation Science Institute. Pathways for an MPH and a master’s in medical education are also available.

Opportunities for Additional Training

Our fellowship program takes full advantage of the many resources at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where opportunities include study at the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, a master’s degree in public health, and the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science.

The Clinical and Translational Science Institute supports a master of science in clinical investigation, with focus areas on translational research, biomedical informatics for clinical investigators, comparative effectiveness and implementation research, health innovations and therapeutics, and healthcare delivery science. The Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Science also supports offerings in a master of biomedical informatics and a master in genome health analysis.

Research Laboratories

Our fellowship program takes full advantage of the many research resources in pulmonary and critical care at NYU Langone.

The NYU Translational Lung Biology Laboratory founded by Leopoldo N. Segal, MD, is a multicenter PI lab focused on bringing research from bench to bedside. Its studies look at real-world questions: the effect of the lung microbiome on lung cancer pathogenesis; how to develop biomarkers for early diagnosis of lung cancer; endotyping critically ill patients to better understand the development of the ventilator-associated pneumonia and other complications; pathomechanism of NTM infection; transcriptomic signatures at the overlap of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF); emphysema, and combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema (CPFE); and pulmonary signatures of thrombosis. Dr. Segal’s lab brings extensive experience in multiomic approaches to the investigation of pulmonary and critical care diseases.

The William N. Rom Environmental Lung Disease Laboratory, housed at Bellevue, is a component of NYU Langone’s World Trade Center (WTC) research program and the WTC Environmental Health Center. The laboratory’s mission is to promote lung health through clinical evaluation and treatment of individuals exposed to environmental dusts and epidemiological health tracking, as well as translational research on the mechanisms of WTC- and environmentally related lung diseases.

In addition, several other research laboratories are located at both NYU Langone’s Tisch Hospital and NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. Examples of this include: the André Cournand Respiratory Physiology Research Laboratory at Bellevue where researchers conduct cutting edge lung physiology investigations; and the Nolan Lab, which focus on predictors of lung function loss in firefighters from the World Trade Center (WTC)-exposed Fire Department of New York cohort.