Welcome to MD/PhD Program

Welcome, and thank you for considering the University System of Georgia MD/PhD program. 

We aim to train physician-scientists who serve our region and the general public by bettering our clinical and scientific understanding of disease. At the Medical College of Georgia, the home of our program and Georgia’s only public medical school, you can foster your understanding of current medical practice while pushing the boundaries of medical knowledge. 

We offer the unique opportunity to complete your PhD at any one of four of Georgia’s premier research universities -- Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, University of Georgia, or the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. Our students conduct ground-breaking research in fields as varied as vascular biology and machine learning, obtain extramural funding from sources as the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, and communicate their findings in high-impact journals. 

Furthermore, our program equips students to become leaders in academic medicine. Recent graduates are completing their residency training at locations including Stanford, the Mayo Clinic, and Vanderbilt; program alumni are faculty at medical schools across the nation. 

While our program offers opportunities to complete your training throughout the state of Georgia, the core of our program resides in Augusta. Augusta couples all of the amenities of a large city -- arts festivals, concerts, a burgeoning restaurant scene -- with easy access to outdoor recreation from kayaking on the historic Augusta Canal to world-class golf. And, with the incredible availability of low-cost housing, all of this is easily affordable on our stipends. 

But the keystone of the program is our students. We form a tight-knit, supportive community that greatly eases the many transition points during MD/PhD training (check out our Facebook and Instagram pages for the data). If you have any questions about the program, living in Augusta, admissions, or just want to chat, please reach out to Aleesha Waller, MD/PhD Program Project Coordinator, at mdphd@augusta.edu and she will be happy to introduce to you current MD/PhD students. 

 We look forward to hearing from you,