Center for Quantitative Sciences in Biomedicine
atNorth Carolina State University
The CQSB offers several opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral training.
A limited number of research positions for NCSU pre-doctoral students
in the quantitative sciences are available. These CQSB Graduate
Fellows gain exposure to the interdisciplinary approach promoted by
the Center through participation in CQSB research projects.
Information on our current Fellows is available on the
Personnel page.
The US Food and
Drug Administration, through its Critical Path Initiative and more
generally, has highlighted the urgent need to bring new technologies
to bear on the development of new pharmaceutical and biologic
entities. A key strategy that has been embraced by both the agency
and industry is the integration of quantitative modeling of biological
systems, including representations of pharmacokinetics,
pharmacodynamics, and disease progression, with statistical modeling
of population behavior as a foundation for investigating the potential
efficacy and effectiveness of new entities in the development pipeline
and for designing clinical confirmatory studies. This modeling and
simulation enterprise requires investigators who have been trained at
the interface of mathematics, statistics, and biology. However, there
is a dearth of new graduates with such interdisciplinary training.
A key initiative of the CQSB is to develop a novel curriculum that
seeks to provide a foundation to students in the quantitative sciences
in the area of Modeling and Simulation in Drug Development. The
current vision is that doctoral students in statistics, applied
mathematics, biomathematics, and other quantitative disciplines could
follow a "concentration" in this area in which some of their elective
courses are chosen from a series of targeted courses. The CQSB is
currently seeking input from advisors at Merck, Eli Lilly, and other
companies on the development of the curriculum, including specific
courses.