The MMI Clinician Scientist Curriculum was launched in November 2010, with access via a secure web portal.
The purpose is to sustain the commitment to train clinician scientists in Ireland, building on the experience of delivering the MMI Clinician Scientist Fellowship Programme (CSFP; funded through PRTLI Cycle 4). To this end, a structured training curriculum has been developed for wider use.
In total there are over 60 graduate education modules available through the portal, provided by all the MMI partner institutions to address the topics of the clinician scientist curriculum. Please see below.
Medical graduates undertaking research studies in the MMI partner institutions and their research supervisors are invited to register to use the curriculum web portal.
If you are interested in participating, please contact
cs-curriculum@molecularmedicineireland.ie

Graduate education modules of particular relevance to clinician scientist trainees
The MMI Clinician Scientist Curriculum portal is offered as a resource that gathers together information on graduate education modules of particular relevance to clinician scientist trainees. It will be used to identify structured training that graduate students may wish to pursue in consultation with their research supervisors, and as part of existing institutional requirements with respect to taught module attendance and credits.
Students and supervisors can also identify modules taking place in other institutions that may be of interest. Applications to attend modules are processed by MMI and forwarded to the relevant contacts in each institution.
The intention is that the curriculum will offer key elements for a tailored structured training in clinical and translational research, undertaken by medical graduates in the medical schools of the MMI partner institutions: NUI Galway, RCSI, TCD, UCC and UCD.
MMI curriculum web portal
The resource below lists the graduate education modules currently available under the Clinician Scientist Structured PhD Curriculum topics; please click to reveal the modules available. This gives a flavour of the interactive web portal interface, which also provides comprehensive information on each module to registered users who can then express an interest to attend modules. Please contact MMI via cs-curriculum@molecularmedicineireland.ie to register to use the Clinician Scientist Curriculum web portal.
Core Topics
- Student/supervisor perspective on the PhD process
- Ethical issues in scientific research
- Key aspects of research project design & management, including experimental design, how to maintain a laboratory book, and project management
- The concept of intellectual property and its management
- Online resources for information retrieval and the use of bibliographic software
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: RCSI
Institution: RCSI
Institution: UCC
Institution: UCC
- Essential practices for effective and efficient laboratory-based research
- Familiarisation with bibliographic and Internet tools
- Communicating science
- Intellectual Property
- Health & safety
- Graphic and presentation tools
- Ethics in biomedical research
- Personal effectiveness and professional development
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
- The nature of scientific journals (including rankings, impact factors, citation rates, etc) and the structure of a scientific paper
- Principles of scientific writing
- The scientific publication process from referees to proofs and beyond
- How to review a manuscript
- Presentation skills and the preparation of a good scientific presentation (oral and poster)
- Writing grant proposals
- Planning and writing a PhD thesis
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: UCC
Institution: UCC
Institution: TCD
- Overview of fundamental biostatistical methods
- Key concept of variability and the statistical techniques used in applied medical research
- Study design, analysing one and two sample problems (independent and dependent data) through interval estimation and hypothesis testing approaches, comparing three or more samples (analysis of variance)
- Regression problems, survival analysis, logistic regression, sample size calculations.
Institution: MMI
Institution: NUI Galway
- Study design
- Power calculations
- Sample size calculations
- Data collection instruments
- Validation of study design
- Validation and QC of ongoing studies
- Basic analysis strategies for clinical data
- Statistical approaches
- Significance analysis
- Regression analysis
- Survival analysis
Institution: UCD
- introduce students to the importance of data management for clinical research
- identify and evaluate source data
- describe methodologies for collection of data
- describe the creation of a data management plan for clinical research
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
- Identifying opportunities in academic medicine and making informed decisions on career development
- Interview skills
- Career information from prominent clinician scientists
- Identifying clinician scientist career mentors
Suitable Modules will be available in due course
Optional Topics
- Introduction to molecular biology: DNA replication and recombination
- Mutation and repair and human disease
- Cell signaling mechanisms and disease
- Infectious diseases: the biology of the host‐pathogen interaction
- Control of gene expression and its relevance to human disease
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
- Obtaining and analysing nucleic acid and protein sequence data
- Principles of sequence search and alignment
- Utilising online databases and interpreting data
- How bioinformatics can be used to solve problems and generate knowledge
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
- Terminology and conventions of clinical research
- The drug development pathway
- The clinical trial process including ethical & regulatory considerations for drugs and medical devices, timelines, cost and the key players in clinical trials in Ireland
- Theoretical and practical approach to the best clinical research methodologies
- How novel drugs and devices are brought through early phase clinical development
- How to develop a high quality clinical research evidence base
Institution: MMI
Institution: MMI
- Identifying drug targets and drug candidates
- Molecular modelling
- Drug design technologies
- Characterising drug candidates
- Bringing a drug to the clinic
Institution: RCSI
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
- The development of the pharmaceutical industry
- Pharmacokinetic and pharmacology issues in discovery
- The rise of biopharmaceuticals
- Delivery of biotech molecules by non-injected routes
- Gene delivery using viral and non-viral vectors
- Clinical development from Phase 1-Phase 4 with case studies
- Assessing drug safety using modern toxicology methods
- The role of post-marketing surveillance
- Regulatory affairs and marketing
- Protecting the assets: generics, patenting and intellectual properties
Institution: TCD
- The innovation pathway in medical science from the preclinical to clinical interface
- How biomedical research discoveries are exploited commercially
- Identifying innovative and productive research areas. Identifying opportunities for commercialisation, managing finances, innovation strategies and marketing a product and/or service
- Developing a business plan.
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
- The discovery and validation of potential biomarkers using modern technology (genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, imaging)
- The critical role surrogate markers of disease activity play in our understanding of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutics
Institution: UCD
- Principles of epidemiological study design and analysis and the design and execution of population-based, cohort and case-control studies
- Traditional and emerging research designs, including the advantages and limitations of each with respect to practical aspects of use and implications for data analysis
- Rationale for selecting a specific study design, such as a cohort study versus a case control study
- Differences between prospective and retrospective cohort studies and issues involved in the assembly and follow-up of a cohort
- Considerations in the appropriate selection of controls, and potential sources of bias
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: RCSI
sessions on small group/tutorial teaching, large group teaching, laboratory teaching, computer-assisted teaching and learning, course planning and delivery, the tutors role, setting examination questions, different types of assessment, some subject-specific sessions, keeping records, ethical issues.
Institution: UCC
Institution: UCC
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: MMI
Institution: MMI
Institution: NUI Galway
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: TCD
Institution: UCC
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Institution: UCD
Thanks are due to the CSFP Education Committee (see here for further information) for working to progress the clinician scientist curriculum and to all the module coordinators who have agreed to include graduate education modules as part of the curriculum.
We look forward to the use and further development of the clinician scientist curriculum and the web portal as an important means of collaboration in graduate education.
The MMI curriculum web portal will provide a very flexible resource for assembling graduate education modules as part of various curricula.