Clinician-Scientist Track
Why UT Southwestern?
The Diagnostic Radiology Clinician-Scientist Residency Program is NIH-funded through a competitive T32 award. The training program begins with a full year of dedicated research immediately following internship, and builds upon this experience by devoting six weeks of research in each of the remaining four clinical years to keep trainees engaged in their research and their chosen laboratory. This gives trainees a five-year horizon to select high-risk/high-gain projects and allows them to complete their project, publish their work, submit grant proposals, and assume greater responsibility in the laboratory to better learn how to build and maintain a research team.
Once trainees begin clinical training, they will learn alongside their clinical colleagues over the entire four-year clinical program without interruption, except for the six weeks per year, to maintain pace and competence. In addition, the fourth year has nine months of electives to focus on mini-fellowships, additional research, and potentially mentored teaching of medical students.
Radiology Faculty
Suhny Abbara, M.D.
- Chief, Cardiothoracic Imaging
- Professor
Rajiv Chopra, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
Baowei Fei, Ph.D.
- Professor
- Research Lab
Joseph Maldjian, M.D.
- Professor
Craig Malloy, M.D.
- Professor
Ralph Mason, Ph.D.
- Professor
Robert Mattrey, M.D.
- Professor
Orhan Öz, M.D., Ph.D.
- Professor
Ivan Pedrosa, M.D., Ph.D.
- Interim Vice Chair, Research
- Professor
Fangyu Peng, M.D., Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
Ronald Peshock, M.D.
- Professor
Dean Sherry, Ph.D.
- Professor
Xiankai Sun, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
Takeshi Yokoo, M.D., Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
Faculty from Other Departments
James Brugarolas, M.D., Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
- Internal Medicine
Ralph Deberardinis, M.D., Ph.D.
- Chief, Division of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism
- Associate Professor
Helen Hobbs, M.D.
- Professor and Director
- Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics
Orson Moe, M.D.
- Professor
- Internal Medicine and Physiology
Program Highlights
- The internship year in Internal Medicine or Surgery includes three months of radiology to provide trainees exposure to imaging science, opportunity to meet our mentors and their research teams, become familiar with the mentor's research focus, rotate through labs, and select a mentor and a project by the spring. Trainees will then pass the required training to be cleared to perform animal and/or clinical research in order to begin the research year immediately upon joining Radiology.
- The clinical teaching program is based at Parkland Hospital, where residents receive approximately two-thirds of their training. Residents also rotate at William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital and Children’s Health℠ Children’s Medical Center.
- Rotation schedules are structured on a four-week block basis, providing 13 rotations per year and a significant exposure to the core radiological subspecialties. The Residency rotation curriculum is structured to provide each resident a solid foundation in all of the subspecialties prior to the CORE examination at the end of the third year.
- This integrated, six-year experience will expose trainees to a minimum of 21 months of dedicated research time.
Clinical Training
A comprehensive learning experience employs:
- Rotation schedules are structured on a four-week block basis, providing 13 rotations per year and a significant exposure to the core radiological subspecialties. The Residency rotation curriculum is structured to provide each resident a solid foundation in all of the subspecialties prior to the CORE examination at the end of the third year.
- Section-based curriculum including education radiologic physics
- First clinical year devoted primarily to rotating through the basic services of thoracic, musculoskeletal, body imaging, neuroimaging, and emergency radiology
- Subsequent second and third years to include further training in these and other fields, along with a structured rotation schedule. Services include nuclear medicine, PET and PET-CT, magnetic resonance imaging, breast imaging, interventional radiology, and pediatric radiology
- Mixed structured and elective-based fourth year experience to provide completion of training requirements and allow resident self-directed educational focus
Teaching Resources
Training in radiologic pathology is available in the third year of residency training through a four-week elective at the American Institute for Radiology Pathology RadPath Course in Washington, D.C., with enrollment and a stipend for attendance provided by the program.
Online teaching files are available through UT Southwestern and Parkland Health & Hospital System, as well as the American College of Radiology teaching file and a large collection of videotaped lectures and electronic educational material. Residents are also provided access to eAnatomy, RADPrimer and STATdx.
The American College of Radiology In-Training Examination, a practice exam, is given each year to residents in the Department. Intensive review sessions are held for residents taking the American Board of Radiology CORE examination
Call Duty
Independent call provided by residents is one of the strengths of our program and residents remain independent overnight at all of our clinical sites. Residents begin taking night call shifts after 12 months of radiologic training. The majority of call is distributed through a night-float system. This part of their education continues for the remainder of their residency.
- Two residents at Parkland Hospital
- One resident at Children’s Health℠
- One resident at Clements University Hospital
Facilities and Equipment
Clinical equipment includes:
- Five whole-body MRI units at UTSW
- One 7T
- Four 3T
- Six whole-body MRI units at Children’s Health℠
- Two 3T
- Four 1.5T
- Positron emission tomography mammography
- 16.5 MeV Cyclotron
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) system for brain imaging
- High Intensity Focused Ultrasound
- Spectral CT
- Small animal MR, SPECT, PET, and CT
Additional research facilities and equipment includes:
The Department of Radiology and the closely associated Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC) occupy more than 60,000 square feet of laboratory space. They are equipped with a full set of human imaging equipment dedicated for research. Included are:
- Several MRI scanners from 1.5 to 7.0T, spectral CT
- Ultrasound and MR-guided HIFU
- Nuclear medicine
- Positron emission tomography, including a cyclotron, and magnetoencephalography
- PET, SPECT, microCT, MRI, Optical, and photoacoustic imaging and tomography for mouse imaging
- Several hyperpolarizing systems for metabolic MR imaging
Conferences
Radiology teaching conferences are held daily throughout the year and include both didactic lectures and case-based presentations in a predominately section-based format. Weekly “Mega Conferences” bring the entire residency together for focused topics or excellent lecturers. First-year Radiology residents also benefit from a dedicated introductory course provided by fourth-year residents.
Radiology Grand Rounds are held monthly with prestigious visiting and local professors, offering the opportunity to meet and learn from leading national authorities on a wide variety of topics.
Informative multidisciplinary clinical conferences in combination with medicine, surgery, pathology, and the various clinical subspecialties are available.
UT Southwestern Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Medical Physics and Engineering provides formal education in the basic sciences of radiation biology and radiological physics in preparation for the physics portion of the American Board of Radiology examination.
Research Opportunities
All fields of radiology research are available options for clinician-scientists and are led by expert clinicians and basic scientists in the field including:
- Basic and applied spectral CT utilizing the latest multidetector system
- Cardiovascular imaging and metabolism
- Translational body- and neuro-focused basic physics
- Pulse programming and post-processing
- MR-guided high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU)
- Ultrasound-based molecular imaging and therapy and instrumentation
- MR/CT/nuclear/PET molecular imaging
- Nuclear imaging and radiochemistry
- Cancer imaging biology and therapy
- Genetic-basis of disease
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Informatics
- Health services research
- Population science
Alongside these options, the Department of Radiology is also closely associated with the Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC). The AIRC is focused on metabolic and molecular imaging, providing an extensive list of research equipment in all imaging modalities and more than 60,000 square feet of laboratory space.
Salaries and Benefits
Hospital stipends are set annually and are competitive nationally with those of other teaching programs. The amount, shown in the chart below, depends on the year of residency training.
Low-cost hospitalization and dental insurance is available to contracted house staff, as well as a group life insurance plan.
Medical malpractice insurance is provided for Radiology house staff by the Department through the University of Texas System group plan.
Each trainee will follow the UT Southwestern vacation and floating holiday accrual rates for full-time employees.
Site-based meal stipends are provided based on call shifts.
Subsidized resident parking is available.
| Salary | |
|---|---|
| PGY 1 | $63,900.00 |
| PGY 2 | $66,355.00 |
| PGY 3 | $69,112.00 |
| PGY 4 | $72,486.00 |
| PGY 5 | $75,835.00 |
| PGY 6 | $79,086.00 |
| PGY 7 | $82,716.00 |
| PGY 8 | $86,866.00 |
UT Southwestern Contract (Clinician-Scientist Track - First Year Only)
Application Process
The program provides three positions per program year. Information regarding the application process can be found here.
Because of the mandatory internship at UT Southwestern, specific instruction on how to apply to the Radiology Clinician-Scientist Track and Internship at UT Southwestern will be provided during the interview.
International Medical Graduates
For questions regarding International Medical Graduates, please visit our residency page.