The overall objective of this T35 proposal is to provide meaningful ten week summer research experiences for twelve first year medical students in settings characterized by excellence in investigation and excellence in mentoring. Our long-term goal is to establish a foundation for future physician- scientist careers. To do this, we plan to focus this program on research relating to heart, lung, and blood disorders. This strategy takes advantage of the long history of funded and excellent research in these areas on our campus and affiliated hospitals. We will utilize our 5 NHLBI funded T32 faculty for research placements. These T32s are focused in the following areas: 1) lung biology 2) regenerative medicine 3) cardiovascular epidemiology 4) blood diseases, and 5) cardiovascular biology. This strategy ensures that T35 faculty are committed to mentorship and engaged in superior research, and provides a rich portfolio of topics and experiences for students to choose from. To enter this T35 program, interested students will submit a short research proposal in collaboration with a faculty mentor for review by a faculty/student committee. Once accepted, students will be expected to participate in the scholarly activities of their home T32 program, including seminars, presentations, lab meetings etc. This will be supplemented by weekly seminars to discuss RCR, critical thinking, and presentation skills. During the following winter, students will present their research projects at a campus-wide research symposium. Students will be encouraged to work with their mentors to prepare an abstract for submission to a national research meeting. Longitudinal scholarly experiences via continued work with their mentors for the remaining three years of medical school is an option for T35 participants and will fulfill a BUSM research track requirement. Students achieving this will earn a special designation upon graduation. In order to assess the effect of our T35 program, students will be given an ORCID so that future scholarly activities can be monitored. In addition, there are built in defined metrics to guide programmatic improvement and assess overall impact. In sum, we strongly believe that this new T35 program will provide meaningful research experiences that will propel careers as physician-scientists.
The purpose of this grant is to support meaningful summer research experiences for first year medical students that are characterized by excellence in investigation and mentorship. Our goal is to o provide the kind of profound research experiences to propel medical students to recognize the excitement and fulfillment associated with creating new knowledge that can eventually improve human health. Our long term goals is establish a foundation for physician scientist careers.
