Education

Educational Enrichment Program

The main goal of the Planning Centers for Interdisciplinary Research in Benign Urology [IR-BU] Center is to integrate the study of BPH and LUTS into the University as a whole as a way to introduce different investigators, both basic and clinical, to this field.  The Educational Enrichment Program is established to help achieve this goal by serving as a BPH and LUTS-informational resource for the University of Pittsburgh.  At the same time, the activities within this program will give the members of the IR-BU Center opportunities to interact with one another and to be exposed to emerging areas within the field, thereby increasing their potential for making meaningful discoveries.  Also, there will be synergy between the educational enrichment program and the T32 Urology Postdoctoral Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh.  Post-doctoral fellows with interest in BPH/LUTS will be favorably considered for NIH training awards.  This will be facilitated by the fact that Dr. Wang is the Principal Investigator of the T32 grant.

Educational Enrichment Committee

This committee has the responsibility of planning and implementing educational enrichment activities such as a mini-symposium and graduate student outreach.  In addition, this Committee will coordinate with the Urology Department to expand the weekly Urology research seminar series to include more BPH and LUTS researchers.  Through their efforts, the Center will become an important resource for information regarding BPH and LUTS.   

 Director and Committee of Educational Enrichment Program

• Donald DeFranco, PhD: Director
• Zhou Wang, PhD:  member
• Naoki Yoshimura, MD  PhD: member