Clinician Scientists – an initiative by Stiftung Charité

Program

Clinician scientists – Bridging research and patient care

Clinician Scientists are research-active physicians who combine clinical patient care with scientific research. They translate urgent questions from everyday clinical practice into research and ensure that new scientific findings find their way into medical practice. This direct exchange between research and clinical practice is indispensable for the advancement of medical care and the development of innovative therapies and diagnostic procedures.

Stiftung Charité – Pioneering a new career path

Stiftung Charité is the initiator and long-standing funder of the Berlin Clinician Scientist Program, which provides physicians with structured training that combines research and clinical practice.

The initiative for the program started with the observation that many young physicians struggled to find time for research due to their obligations in patient care. Their scientific activities were often limited to “after-hours research,” which is not sufficient for building a long-term scientific career. As a result, many qualified and motivated physicians left research for good or moved abroad, particularly during the multi-year residency training period.

In 2010, Stiftung Charité and VolkswagenStiftung developed a pilot program to open up a new career path for research-active physicians. The foundations did so with the input from junior clinicians and scientists as well as decision-makers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The resulting “Friedrich C. Luft Clinical Scientist Pilot Program” was launched the following year with eight participants. The core principles of this program, which provided physicians with structured specialist training while ensuring dedicated research time, have remained in place to this day:

Clinician Scientists, selected through a competitive process, receive protected time for research, amounting to 50 per cent of their clinical position during the second half of their residency training.
Thanks to an agreement with the Berlin Medical Association (Ärztekammer Berlin), a large part of this research time can be credited towards residency training, thus minimizing delays in career progression compared to a purely clinical career.
A targeted curriculum, tailored to the specific interests and needs of Clinician Scientists, accompanies the training phase.

With this innovative model, new standards have been set in Berlin for the compatibility of research and clinical training. This has attracted nationwide attention.

A structured model with nationwide impact – From Berlin to all of German university medicine

Following the success of the pilot program, the Clinician Scientist Program was institutionalized and expanded in 2014 under the leadership of Charité and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), setting new standards for the structure and quality of university medical training.

In 2015, the program was recognized as a “best practice model” by the German Research Foundation (DFG). On this basis, the DFG has issued several recommendations for integrated research and training programs during and after residency training (see here, 2015 and here, 2018) and launched its own temporary funding programs (see here). Currently, the DFG funds 23 clinician scientist programs with approximately 400 rotational positions (as of 2024). In addition, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has been funding Advanced Clinician Scientist Programs since 2021 (see here). These programs, aimed at physicians after residency training who are committed to research, currently include eight programs with approximately 100 rotational positions and a total funding amount of about 100 million euros.

“Clinician scientists play a key role in clinical research and are extremely important to all life sciences. As highly trained specialists in all fields of medicine, they are thus important contact partners for technological development and fundamental research. This group of professionals alone also guarantees that pure basic research is combined with clinically motivated basic research in life sciences. Young doctors with academic qualifications are therefore key players in sustaining the innovative capacity of university hospitals and drivers in life sciences as a whole.”

— German Research Foundation

Today, most medical faculties in Germany have their own Clinician Scientist Program. These programs have permanently changed German university medicine, strengthened the link between research and clinical practice, and significantly enhanced the innovative capacity of the healthcare system. By co-creating the Berlin program, Stiftung Charité recognized the need for innovative career structures in university medicine early and acted as a catalyst for this cultural change.

The BIH Charité Clinician Scientist program today – Tailored support programs for different career stages

With currently around 170 active fellows and over 250 alumni (as of 2024), the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program (see here) is not only one of the oldest, but also the largest of its kind in Germany. Stiftung Charité has supported the program since the pilot phase and remains actively involved through its participation in the Clinician Scientist Board.

The BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program offers customized funding lines that are tailored to the respective career phases of research-active physicians:

Junior Clinician Scientist Program (Junior CSP): Funding designed for physicians in the first three years of their residency training, allowing them to dedicate 20 per cent of their working time to research.
Clinician Scientist Program (CSP): Funding for physicians who are in their fourth year of residency training or a later stage. Physicians accepted into the program can allocate up to 50 per cent of their working time to research activities.
Advanced Clinician Scientist Program (Advanced CSP): Piloted in 2020, this track is aimed at physicians on the path to professorship (with a German ‘Habilitation’).

The BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program is open topic and interdisciplinary. To meet the demands of digital medicine, the (Junior) Digital Clinician Scientist Program was introduced in 2019 to nurture research-active physicians in the field of digital health specifically. The focus is on computational assisted medicine, e.g. in the areas of AI, machine learning, imaging, analysis, modeling, big data and bioinformatics.

Since 2024, Stiftung Charité is providing funding for designated AI/XR Digital Clinician Scientists who integrate digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) into clinical practice. The focus is on developing and piloting applications that sustainably improve patient care – ranging from AI-assisted diagnostics and personalized therapies to XR technologies for preoperative planning and patient education.

Scientific excellence thrives through international collaboration and global competition. Mobility and networking are essential for sharing knowledge, gaining new perspectives, and working together on solutions. With the Internationalization Grants launched in 2024, Stiftung Charité supports cooperation projects between fellows of the BIH Charité Clinician Scientist Program and international experts. The grants cover travel, accommodation and subsistence costs for research stays of approx. three months at partner institutions abroad (outbound) or guest stays of international experts at Charité (inbound).