The aim of the HSCI Medical Scientist fellowship program is to support the training of clinician scientists with expertise in stem cells by providing a stipend for MD-PhD students whose thesis projects and/or long term research goals involve stem cell research. The program is coordinated jointly with the Harvard-MIT combined MD-PhD program, and applicants must be nominated by the program director. See MD-PhD Program for general information.

Zuzana Tothova,PhD, is the second recipient of HSCI’s Medical Scientist Training Fellowship award.

The second recipient of the HSCI award is Zuzana Tothova, PhD, who completed her doctorate at Harvard Medical School in May 2007. Her dissertation work, entitled "Role of forkhead transcriptional factors in hematopoiesis and leukemogenesis," took place in the lab of Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD Brigham and Women's Hospital. Tothova will reenter clinical rotations in the summer of 2007 and continue her medical school education.  Tothova will receive HSCI tuition and stipend support for her MD Program from 2007-2009.  Her long-term goal is to pursue a career as a physician scientist interested in normal and malignant stem cell biology.

The first recipient of this award was Ashutosh Jadhav, MD, PhD whose thesis work was carried out in the lab of Professor Constance Cepko, Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, where he studied the development of the mammalian retina. The title of his thesis was "Regulation of vertebrate retinal development by the Notch signaling pathway."  Jadhav received HSCI tuition and stipend support for his MD Program from 2005-2007.

Jadhav completed his PhD in Genetics in the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard University in April 2005 and completed his medical degree at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology in June 2007.  He has now started his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Neurology.