The ACGME ID Fellowship training program is designed to train individuals for academic careers in clinical medicine and/or medical research. The first year of ID fellowship is an intensive clinical experience. Beginning in the second year, ID fellows pursue a research track or a specialized clinical year focused on HIV or transplant infectious diseases.

The research track is an in-depth research experience under the mentorship of a member of the Infectious Diseases faculty at either the MGH or BWH. Some fellows pursue basic research training with other faculty at Harvard Medical School, in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Department, in Immunology, in Virology, or in Parasitology. Many of the faculty of the MGH and BWH Infectious Disease Divisions have joint appointments in these Departments and Programs and are also part of these training communities. During the first year of fellowship, each Infectious Diseases fellow selects a mentor and, together with his/her mentor, identifies a research project. All fellows who choose to train with a member of the Infectious Diseases faculty at MGH or BWH or a participating faculty member on one of the three Harvard-wide ID training grants are guaranteed to have grant or divisional support for the second year of fellowship.

Individuals wishing a post-doctoral research fellowship separate from the ACGME fellowship program should contact potential faculty mentors directly. The research interests of MGH faculty can be accessed by clicking here.

Research training provides mentorship in several areas critical to the fellow's career development:

• Critical evaluation of the medical and scientific research literature.
• Formulation of testable scientific hypotheses and execution of approaches to test these hypotheses.
• Critical evaluation of experimental results.
• Presentation of results at scientific meetings.
• Writing and publishing of manuscripts of scientific findings in high quality peer-reviewed journals.
• Formulation and writing of grant proposals for competitive review.

Typically, two or more years are spent in research training. Fellows work with mentors to develop grant writing skills and additional research support funds, and mentors commit to underwrite support for the fellow’s research training if additional funding is not available.

Investigative research is supplemented by journal clubs and work-in-progress conferences with research groups with similar interests, e.g., HIV group, bacterial pathogenesis group, and others. These basic science conferences are open to all fellows. Research fellows present their work and actively participate in these conferences. The fellow is expected to prepare the results of his/her research with guidance from the mentor for presentation at national or international scientific meetings and for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.