Newswise — HHMI has selected 68 top medical and veterinary students from 37 different schools in the United States to conduct full-time biomedical research in its Medical Research Fellows Program. The $2.8 million annual initiative is designed to develop the next generation of physician-scientists by giving the students a full year of mentored research training with some of the nation’s top biomedical scientists.
This year, five physician-scientists who are program alumni will serve as mentors to medical fellows in the new class. One of those mentors, Daphne Haas-Kogan, was a member of the inaugural class of Medical Research Fellows in 1989. “Given the mentorship I received as an HHMI Medical Fellow, I cannot imagine a career that did not revolve around being a mentor to future physician-scientists,” said Haas-Kogan, who is now a professor of Radiation Oncology and Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. In July, she will become chair of the department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
“Little brings me more pleasure than to sit down with a student, trainee or young faculty member, and discuss their research interests, personal goals, and career plans. My year as an HHMI Medical Fellow during medical school truly changed my trajectory as a translational scientist and infused me with the enthusiasm that I still hold for medicine, science, and teaching,” she said.
The HHMI Medical Research Fellows Program allows medical, dental, and veterinary students to pursue biomedical research at academic or nonprofit research institutions anywhere in the United States except the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland or other federal agencies. The fellows put their medical school coursework on hold, and spend a year immersed in basic, translational or applied biomedical research. This year, 187 students from 76 institutions applied to the program. Each student applied with a mentor of his/her choice and submitted a research proposal.
HHMI investigator Vivian Cheung will be mentoring a fellow in her lab at the University of Michigan. “Medical school curricula alone do not equip students with enough basic biology to find answers that promote health and combat disease,” said Cheung. “The HHMI Medical Fellows Program fills this gap and is a model for educating physicians who will be ‘fluent’ in basic science and therefore bridge discoveries to health.”
Twenty-two medical fellows will work in the laboratories of HHMI investigators, and one student will work with a researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH), in Durban, South Africa, a collaborative partnership between HHMI and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Eight of the 68 fellows will be funded by HHMI’s partner organizations this year: the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF), Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB), the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF), and the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation (PDF).
Six students from the current class of Medical Fellows will be supported by HHMI for an additional year in the program.
The Medical Research Fellows Program has funded more than 1,600 students since it was established by HHMI 26 years ago.
To see the names and institutions of the new HHMI Medical Research Fellows, please visit:https://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmi-names-68-new-medical-research-fellows
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