06/15/2018
New Cleveland Clinic MENTR Trainees Announced
Cleveland Clinic physicians Marisa McGinley, DO, and Jijun Xu, MD, PhD, were recently accepted to the Mentoring Exceptional New Translational Researchers (MENTR) Program.
MENTR is an innovative two-year professional staff development program that bridges the gap between basic and clinical research, providing tailored curriculum and mentorship to help build the next generation of well-rounded and multi-disciplinary physicians and researchers at Cleveland Clinic. In addition, the program provides $50,000 of research project support over the course of two years, salary support and protected research time for clinicians.
Dr. McGinley is Associate Staff in the Mellen Center for Multiple Sclerosis, part of Cleveland Clinic's Neurological Institute. She received her DO from Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her post-graduate training at Loyola University, where she was the Chief Neurology Resident, and at Cleveland Clinic. The title of her research project is "Development of a Novel Smartphone-Based Tool to Provide Rapid, Remote Neurological Assessment."
Dr. Xu is Staff Physician in the Department of Pain Management, part of Cleveland Clinic's Anesthesiology Institute, and Associate Staff in the Department of Inflammation and Immunity, part of the Lerner Research Institute. He received his MD from the Medical School of Nantong University and his PhD in Neuroscience and Genes and Development from the University of Texas (UT). He completed post-graduate training at the Medical School of Nantog, the UT Health Science Center at Houston, the UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Xu's project is called "Complement as a Novel Target for Paclitaxl-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Management."
The MENTR program scholars will have access to the activities and seminars of the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative's Mentored Clinical Research Scholars (KL2) Training program. The KL2 program enables early-stage investigators to learn and conduct collaborative clinical research alongside experienced mentors. The KL2 program is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, through Clinical and Translational Science Awards.
