Fellows become involved with research at the beginning of their training program, and one full year of training is dedicated to research. Research projects, developed during the 1st and 2nd years of training, are normally completed during the 3rd year, which focuses solely on research.
Clinical research opportunities are available in the fields of echocardiography, including transesophageal echocardiography, stress echocardiography and fetal echocardiography, body surface potential mapping, electrophysiology, and interventional cardiac catheterization. Extensive clinical research opportunities are available with other subspecialties in Pediatrics, and well as other departments within University Hospitals of Cleveland.
Basic science research opportunities are available in embryology, electrophysiology, interventional cardiac catheterization and biomedical engineering. Close cooperation with the Division of Adult Cardiology (Dept. of Medicine), and the Departments of Genetics, and Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine provide fertile opportunities for basic science research.
Each fellow is required to take the institution's fellows course and a statistics course offered by the Department of Pediatrics. Computer skills for data analysis and presentations are an integral part of the program. The faculty mentor is responsible for regular and in depth review of the progress of the research. The preparation of grants and manuscripts is supervised by the faculty mentor and reviewed by the program director.
Review of division based research program
Dr. Michiko Watanabe's laboratory has been very active in the training of pediatric cardiology and adult cardiology fellows. She is NIH funded and has extensive collaborations in the pediatric department, in the medical school and nationally. Her laboratory is in the new research floor of Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. Dr. Marco Cabrera's basic research investigations have been in the area of computer modeling of lactate metabolism during hypoxia. His exercise physiology interest and training has been invaluable for training our fellows in the science of exercise. He is currently collaborating with Dr. Parvin Dorostkar has been active in the application of electroanatomic mapping both in the electrophysiology laboratory and the animal laboratory. Her clinical research focused on outcomes in pediatric heart diseases.