If you were to ask Doris Rubio, PhD, and Thomas Radomski, MD, MS, what success looks like for the ICRE’s training programs, they’d be hard-pressed to narrow down their answer with the countless success stories among their alumni. From Jason Sperry, MD, MPH, whose KL2-era research has since reshaped global resuscitation practice and resulted in nearly $90 million in DoD funding, to Alison Culyba, MD, PhD, MPH, whose KL2 experience built the network that later helped make her Division Chief of Adolescent Medicine, ICRE KL2 and TL1 graduates illustrate what the programs have always been designed to do: give researchers the skills, mentorship, and connections to build careers that extend well beyond their time as trainees.

Now, the long-running TL1 and KL2 programs are entering a new chapter, reorganized into T32 and K12 programs. While the names and structure have changed, the commitment to developing successful researchers has not. “We remain committed to our trainees’ success,” Rubio and Radomski said.

That commitment is reflected in a longstanding emphasis on grant-writing support and mock study sections that have resulted in Scholars with a 74% success rate for K awards, a 100% success rate for R01s, and a 60% success rate for T32 fellows for F or K awards.

The new structure, however, is designed to do more than preserve that track record. Instead, it places a greater emphasis on how researchers work across disciplines and how quickly they can translate scientific discoveries into better health. To support that goal, the programs have introduced a Translational Science Skills Laboratory along with a new course, Leading and Managing Translational Science Teams. Together, they are intended to give trainees practical skills for navigating the increasingly complex environment in which research is conducted.

The Skills Laboratory also reflects one of the most significant changes in the new model: bringing trainees at different career stages into the same learning environment. Predoctoral T32 students, postdoctoral T32 fellows, and K12 Scholars are now working together rather than training in isolation on completely separate tracks. The idea is simple: researchers can learn a great deal from colleagues who are only a step or two ahead of them.

“You learn best from people who are just above your career stage,” Rubio and Radomski said. “Having doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty members work together facilitates a diverse community of trainees who learn from their colleagues and expand their networks.”

That shared environment also reflects the breadth of the programs themselves. Unlike training programs centered on a particular disease or department, ICRE’s T32s and K12 are designed to span the translational research spectrum. For trainees, that means learning to communicate with researchers who may approach the same problem from entirely different perspectives and then developing the ability to see how those perspectives can fit together.

Similarly, rather than relying on a single mentor, trainees work with multidisciplinary mentoring teams, challenging researchers to think differently about their own work.

“The data show that diverse research teams publish in higher-impact journals and are cited more frequently than teams whose members are more similar,” they said. “We have found that multidisciplinary mentoring pushes our trainees to think about their research in new ways, and this thinking is where the most innovative work comes from.”

The programs’ connection to ICRE and Pitt’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) also gives trainees access to resources that extend beyond the formal curriculum, from ICRE experts who teach courses to CTSI pilot funding that can help turn an early idea into a funded project or connections through the national CTSA network. For Rubio and Radomski, that broader ecosystem is part of what makes the training model work. Between them, they have spent decades leading multidisciplinary teams and training researchers across the translational spectrum, from laboratory science to clinical research and policy. They are now applying that experience to a model designed to make collaboration and leadership integral parts of research training rather than skills trainees acquire by chance.

The new programs are not starting from scratch. Their history stretches back more than two decades, and the alumni of the former TL1 and KL2 programs provide a long list of examples of what that investment can produce. Across the programs, K Scholars have earned $73 million and counting in NIH funding, while T trainees have produced 1,821 publications. Ninety percent of K and T trainees remain active in research.

But Rubio and Radomski see the new structure as an opportunity to make the community itself stronger.

“For the first time, K12 Scholars and T32 trainees will become one community instead of three tracks that only occasionally cross paths,” they said.

That means trainees will not only benefit from mentoring by faculty and senior researchers; they will be expected to mentor and coach one another. While leadership development can sometimes be treated as something researchers figure out later, after they become faculty members or take on formal leadership roles, the new ICRE curriculum makes it an explicit part of training from the beginning. The goal is to give researchers tools they can use immediately, from navigating the job market to leading their first faculty meeting.

“Leadership and mentoring are not something trainees pick up by accident anymore; it is taught intentionally, starting in year one.”

But, ultimately, Rubio and Radomski measure the programs’ success beyond how many remain in research, receive subsequent funding, or the other traditional markers of academic achievement.

“We follow our alumni because the real win is seeing their work show up in actual clinical practice and policy, not just on a CV.”