As one of the OARSI scholarship award recipients in 2010, I would strongly recommend other young investigators to apply for the scholarship in 2011. With the scholarship, you get an excellent opportunity to do interesting research, increase your knowledge, participate in the "daily life" in another research department, and make new colleagues and friends.
I spent 10 wonderful weeks at Dr Felson's clinical epidemiology department in Boston summer 2010. My main research focus is imaging in hand OA, and I currently work as a PhD student at the Department of Rheumatology at Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo, Norway. With the scholarship, I also got the opportunity to work with hand radiographs from the well-known Framingham cohort. I participated both in the data collection (i.e. reading hand radiographs) and analyses of these data. I was very well trained and got excellent supervision from both my mentor Dr Felson and the radiologist, which gave me important knowledge and experience in the specific area of hand OA. Not less important, I was invited to take part of their research meetings, and these discussions among very competent researchers (both experienced senior researchers and younger research fellows) provided important insight into general clinical epidemiology and inspiration for new research questions. For me, this scholarship was also a door opener for future collaboration projects, which I greatly appreciate.
If you have any questions regarding the scholarship, please don't hesitate to contact me (ida.haugen@diakonsyk.no)