Project Summary
The mission of the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program is to provide an academic and social environment that
inculcates in our students the vital importance of rigorous clinical and scientific know-how, the highest ethical
standards, commitment to inclusion and diversity, and most of all, the drive to harness their remarkable talents
to promote healing over the short and long term. A key component of our mission is the recognition that each
student brings to the table a unique background, skill set, and vision for their future career. For this reason, we
promote an integrated training curriculum that affords essential standards complemented by operational
flexibility. Our students pursue either (1) a truly unique Health Sciences and Technology (HST) curriculum that
represents a Harvard and MIT collaboration emphasizing the mechanisms of medicine and the impact of
mathematics, physics and engineering on our fundamental understanding of physiology and opportunities to
innovate; or (2) a Pathways curriculum that features a “flipped classroom” approach in which multidimensional
thinking and hands-on learning rules the day and a liberal arts culture of “any and every medical career route is
possible” is palpable. The academic choices available to our students at the graduate research phase are equally
robust, spanning a remarkable breadth of institutions, basic and social science graduate programs, and research
spectra that incorporate essentially any and every training discipline available at Harvard University (HU),
Harvard Medical School (HMS), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As an MD-PhD training
program that sits at the intersection of such renowned institutions and hospitals, our mission is based on five key
pillars: (1) selecting and recruiting the nation’s most promising and diverse young talent; (2) providing an
integrated and evidence-based MD-PhD curriculum that features comprehensive dual-degree training; (3)
assembling and training the ideal constellation of faculty leaders, advisors, and role models who embody the
breadth and depth of clinical and research disciplines; (4) fostering an inclusive, diverse, and dynamic MD-PhD
training community that is enriched by tailored academic, social, and career development programming; and (5)
developing the funding base to maximally support our enrolled students and enable the continued growth of our
program so that we can contribute to building a larger, much-needed MD-PhD workforce to serve the critical
health care and biomedical technology needs of the nation and world. To execute the proposed training program,
we have assembled a quartet of academic leaders with complementary expertise and institutional representation,
spanning HMS basic science and clinical care, MIT basic science, HU/HMS social science, and education
evaluation, multiculturalism, and under-represented minority student and faculty recruitment. Our leaders have
established a bold set of 9 academic and integrative training objectives to promote the personal and professional
development of budding physician-scientists who are balanced, fulfilled, and maximally prepared to make their
mark as multi-talented, multi-dimensional, and multi-disciplinary caregivers, researchers, and educators.