Professional Development Core

The primary goal of the Professional Development Core (PDC) is to provide comprehensive didactic training and
mentorship in clinical research.

• The intended recipients of PDC training and education would be individuals who have received TRANSCEND clinical and translational research funds or are interested in enhancing their skills in order to pursue TRANSCEND funds.
• The fundamental elements of the PDC will include a didactic curriculum regarding practical
  issues associated with clinical research.
• Also, there will be a multifaceted mentoring program that utilizes individual mentorship, group mentorship, and consultation mentorship to provide mentees with comprehensive guidance in terms of clinical research knowledge, and professional development.
• The overarching goals of the PDC can be characterized by the following set of specific aims:
  • Aim 1 will be to integrate clinical and scientific resources from the Sanford Health system with two North Dakota universities to propel clinical research training in the region.
  • Aim 2 is to create a comprehensive clinical and translational didactic training program that relies on a variety of modalities for clinical research teaching.
  • Aim 3 is to create a multifaceted mentorship program for early career scientists and clinicians
    interested in enhancing clinical and translational research skills.

PDC Core Faculty

Stephen Wonderlich, PhD - Core Lead

Dr. Stephen Wonderlich is Vice President for Research at Sanford Health and Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of North Dakota School Of Medicine. He will serve as Director of the Professional Development Core. He has been affiliated with Sanford for ten years and assumed the role of Vice President for Research in 2018. He has been a member of the UND School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science faculty since 1987 when he came to UND. Over the last 35 years, Dr. Wonderlich has held many administrative, clinical, teaching, and research positions at both the University of North Dakota and Sanford Health/Research.

Don Sens, PhD - Core Co-Lead

Dr. Don Sens is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and will serve as Co-Lead of the PDC. This will allow the close coordination and conservation of resources among the various IDeA programs. Dr. Sens has been the PI of the ND INBRE program since July 2005, the regional contact PI for the IDeA Regional States SHARP HUBs since 2017, as well as co-PI of the professional development core of the DaCCoTA CTR since 2018. Dr. Sens has served as a mentor in a variety of capacities since becoming an assistant professor in 1982. Not counting the present INBRE grant, the direct mentoring experience with undergraduates, graduate students, residents, and postdoctoral fellows numbers well over 200. Dr. Sens’s research is anchored by human tissues and derived cell cultures in biomedical research. The major theme of Dr. Sens’s research concerns the hypothesis that environmental agents that elicit human disease cause cellular alterations in cell structure and function that can be identified as predictive biomarkers of disease development and progression. Within this theme, it is further hypothesized that the identification of such biomarkers can be translated to the diagnostic laboratory to improve the treatment of patients through enhanced diagnosis of the disease process. These hypotheses are pursued under studies designed to show that environmental exposure to arsenic and cadmium are involved in the development and progression of human bladder, breast, prostate, and renal disease and that such exposure produces biomarkers predictive of the disease process.