The Ninth Medical Student Workshop sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International will be held at the Ritz Carlton, Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia on February 9-12. Officially entitled """"""""Diabetes Research In the 1980s: An Introduction For Potential Investigators"""""""", the objective of the meeting is to encourage medical students who have not yet made their choice of speciality training to consider a career in biomedical research in general and diabetes research in particular. To accomplish this goal, the Workshop Organizing Committee invites the Deans of every North American medical school to select one student to attend this conference. To encourage the participation of minority students, the organizers plan to invite each minority medical school to select three students to attend. All travel and accommodation costs incurred by the students and the invited faculty are reimbursed by the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International through funds obtained from the NIH and other workshop sponsors. The conference consists of plenary lectures covering a wide spectrum of diabetes-related areas such as: the etiology and pathogenesis of the disease, the progression of vascular complications and transplantation as a potential therapeutic intervention. The students are also exposed to an intensive lecture on experimental design for both basic and clinical research. In addition, the student participants are divided into working groups and are assigned an experimental question for which they are asked to design a research protocol. The culmination of the meeting is the workgroup presentations which are critiqued by the student attendees and workshop faculty. The first JDF Medical Student Workshop was held at the University of Chicago in 1982. Since then, almost hundred students have been exposed to these intensive sessions on diabetes research. The feedback from the student and faculty participants has been very encouraging, and with the help of the NIH, it is our expectation that this year's meeting will be another outstanding success.
