Georgetown maintains a strong commitment to support research , including recent creation of a separate Office of the Dean of Research and substantial capital investment in new research space. The Dean's Office assists in grant applications for faculty, fellows, and, house staff, and also offers a network available database of faculty research projects. Two new Dean's Office-sponsored grant projects have been initiated in the past few years: the CIRCLE grant program, sponsoring innovative projects in medical student education (begun in 2001), and the newly developed STAIR grants, offering support for research in resident education, specifically innovative teaching of medical students by residents. The department's funding of NIH grants has increased over four-fold in four years. This increase is reflected in otustanding subspecialty and basic science leadership, as well as in clinical and heath services. The Chief Residents accumulate a list of those projects identified by division chiefs as amenable to involvement by house staff. In addition, house staff have the opportunity to work directly under the tutelage of faculty members to receive training in both basic and clinical research during their elective research months. These mentorship relationships are designed to assist in the development of multidisciplinary technical skills, research design, grantsmanship, and manuscript preparation. House staff are matched with mentors according to their particular interests and career goals.

We have recently developed several mechanisms to help residents participate in scholarly activities. A "Mentor Program" assigns each resident a mentor in general internal medicine or an area of subspecialty interest. The Residency Director schedules a career counseling session with each resident during the first year for assignment of a mentor for residents who have not identified one.

We have encouraged participation in the regional and national Clinical Vignette and Research Abstract Competition of the American College of Physicians. Each year, residents submit abstracts for regional and national competition and participate in the Annual City-Wide Associates' Meeting. Residents with winning abstracts are honored and present their work at the Departmental Research Grand Rounds.

Research Grand Rounds
The department holds a monthly Research Grand Rounds at which faculty describe ongoing research activities. In addition, a Fall Research Day is held annually as a forum for faculty and residents to present recent and ongoing research in the department. The day includes scientific podium and poster presentations that allow residents to keep abreast of the spectrum of research at Georgetown.

Resident Research Conference
Residents are required to participate in a scholarly project during their training.  Residents present their research project at monthly Resident Research Conferences; details may be found on our Residents' E-journal page [LINK].