Investigator Development Core Abstract The development of highly competitive and independent research faculty has been a goal at CDU since its establishment. The AXIS Center has been focused on achieving this goal in the last 10 years with measurable success on establishing a cohort of young faculty who advanced in their academic appointments, in securing independent funding and increasing not only their productivity, but also the quality in terms of number of citations and impact factor of publications. The mentoring program established by AXIS Professional Development and Pilot Project Core has increased the faculty productivity in publications, grant submissions and funding. Number of the pilot project recipients were involved in the development of the Precision Medicine concept under AXIS to drive the research on campus to the next step and will continue their involvement in the currently proposed cycle. In the next five (5) years, the Investigator Development Core will work to identify two cohorts of PDFs and ESIs: 1) the first cohort will comprise of investigators, who will join the mentoring program, will develop their Individual Career Development Plans and will work towards increased productivity that leads to securing independent funding (K and R- series awards); 2) the second will comprise of ESIs who have been successful in securing independent funding and have submitted R01 grants, but those were not funded. This second group will be enrolled in a focused training aimed to address specific R01 grant application the mentee has, improving based on reviewers’ comments and refining the application for re-submission. This tiered mentoring approach is geared towards increasing the competitiveness and independence of our investigators in basic, clinical and behavioral research and in their pursuit of higher-level grant support and independent funding. We acknowledge that both groups will need different level and intensity of investigator development support and this approach will allow the Core to provide efficient and effective assistance to the mentees.