For Duke, definitely translational research. Duke has the most translational funding and clinical research trials of anywhere (that's what I was told when I was there).
Translational research? Really? That's a pretty big claim, it's almost close to claiming you're the best at medicine. It's such a broad claim it's almost meaningless, I think. That being said, Duke obviously has a ton of great people and if they told you they have the most translational funding I believe it (although, again, that's such a broad claim you can manipulate the numbers to make yourself come out on top, it's like all the programs that claim to have the most NIH funding). BTW, I'm pretty certain Duke doesn't fund, sponsor, or conduct on-site more clinical trials than the NIH (which is relevant, because you can do an MD-PhD there in partnership with a med school), but I'm sure they weren't counting them (and correct me if I'm wrong). People forget that NIH program, though, look into it if that's what you're interested in.
Jorje286 said:
What do you think is the best way to find out about the research strengths of various schools?
Specifically, what do you think are the research strengths of Washu and Duke? (besides ID for Washu)
The best way to find out who's good at what is to ask: your research advisor, postdocs, and grad students. I wouldn't trust most of the school-specific opinions you hear on SDN, a lot of it is scuttlebutt from inexperienced students that I later found to be mostly wrong. You can obviously get the most reliable and honest information from people at your school, but you'll also get a lot of good information during the interview. Generally, most people you'll talk to will give you names of people rather than places, but obviously some departments are known for being stronger than others. Numbers are too easily manipulated to be reliable, and since strength is so subjective, you might as well get a subjective opinion from someone you believe.
Addendum:
If you don't have anyone reliable to talk to (for example, you're switching fields for graduate study and your advisor can't reccomend anyone for advice), a devent proxy might be citation impact in your field. Bear in mind that citation approaches tend to short change translational work in favor of really fundamental sutff that gets cited over and over again, and to favor certain high impact fields, but it's still useful in a way. ISI's web of Knowledge provides several databases with highly cited researchers sorted by field and institution. However, it's not all that reliable (for example, Charles Janeway, who was a god of Immunology at Yale, passed away a while ago but is still listed), and at best it's a poor proxy for good mentorship. If it's all you have, however, look up a school and your field, and see if they have a few highly cited people.
http://www.isihighlycited.com/
http://in-cites.com/ also sometimes has good summary articles about fields. Also, try looking up high impact journals in your field from
http://admin-apps.isiknowledge.com/JCR/JCR?SID=2BNg9CCeL518cHa7Eef, go to that journals website and see what names pop up. For example, if you're interested in immunology see who gets asked to write the
Annual Reviews. But, to reiterate, these are generally poor proxies for inside tips from someone in the field.
