We propose to continue a program to involve undergraduate students from under-represented minority groups in a summer research experience in biomedical research laboratories at Brown University School of Medicine. The core of the program is a 9 week summer research project in a cardiovascular, pulmonary, hematology, or sleep research laboratory, under the supervision of an accomplished Brown faculty member. This program has been on-going for 9 years and has been successful in recruiting and engaging students of diverse backgrounds from diverse geographic areas and undergraduate institutions. The Brown Short-Term Training Grant for Minority Students (STTMS) works in collaboration with the Leadership Alliance, a consortium of colleges and universities which aims to develop outstanding minority leaders in academia. In conjunction with the Brown Summer Research/Early Identification Program (SR/EIP), Brown STTMS students are matched with an outstanding research faculty member and are provided with a research experience, supplemented by other academic and nonacademic activities. These activities included weekly research seminars, field trips, and two poster symposia in which research results are presented at the end of the summer experience. Faculty members are from a variety of departments and are located either on the main Brown campus or at nearby affiliated teaching hospitals. Faculty are chosen on the basis of the excellence of their research, their commitment to teaching, and their commitment to and enthusiasm for this program. In this renewal application, we proposed increasing the number of undergraduate summer research students to 10 total per summer. We present results of our previous experience showing that of students trained thus far, 45 percent have gone on to MD, PhD, or MD/PhD training programs.
| Fallon, Eleanor A; Chun, Tristen T; Young, Whitney A et al. (2017) Program Cell Death Receptor-1-Mediated Invariant Natural Killer T-Cell Control of Peritoneal Macrophage Modulates Survival in Neonatal Sepsis. Front Immunol 8:1469 |
