This application seeks to establish an R25 Research Education Program, ?Enhancing Diversity among Future ELSI Researchers,? with the long-term objective of helping to diversify the pool of ELSI researchers and thus enrich ELSI scholarship. Our program would draw on regional diversity to build a pipeline that identifies and recruits promising undergraduates from populations historically underrepresented in ELSI and bioethics.
Our specific aims are: 1) To recruit undergraduate students from diverse, underrepresented groups and backgrounds to explore and conduct research in genomics and society studies (methods, skills, history, and content); 2) To mentor and support small cohorts of interdisciplinary trainees, exposing them to career options in genomics and society studies and sparking their interest in pursuing such a career, and integrating them into local, regional, and national bioethics networks; and, 3) To nurture and strengthen relationships between and among bioethics scholars and units at universities in the Baltimore-DC area, creating and sustaining a regional pipeline for the entry of students from diverse, underrepresented groups and backgrounds into genomics and society studies, and the institutional structures and networks to support them over time. Through the R25, our program faculty and staff will create a 15-month training and mentorship experience, the entry point of which will be a new Genomics and Society division of the Johns Hopkins Diversity Summer Internship Program (SIP), offering an intensive 10-week ELSI research experience. The BI will be able to offer multiple research experiences through individual faculty research and through our CEER, Bridging Infectious Disease, Genomics & Society (BRIDGES). Following the on-campus summer program, students will continue their connection to the Hopkins Program throughout the academic year, co-lead the planning of an activity (e.g., seminar, panel, outreach event) related to their interests in Genomics and Society at their home institution, and return to Hopkins and the Berman Institute for one week the following summer for additional training and connection with the next cohort of trainees. The R25 will fund five trainees per year for five years. An additional trainee each year will be funded by University of Maryland Baltimore County, one of our regional partners.
The proposed R25 Research Education Program is devoted to building a 15-month research mentorship program at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics (BI) for students from diverse, underrepresented groups and backgrounds, to help diversify the pool of ELSI researchers and thus enrich scholarship in genomics and society studies. Trainees will learn research skills, build networks, and gain exposure to the range of possible training and career options in ELSI research. Student trainees will contribute to genomics and society research that 1) examines the ethical, legal, social, historical and policy issues confronting the application of genomics to the prevention, outbreak control, and treatment of infectious diseases, which pose an enormous health burden in the U.S. and globally; and 2) studies the impact of genetic testing for hereditary disease on at-risk families, to help understand and improve how genetic risk information is communicated with families and within them.
