Summer Training in Translational Biomedical Research

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

Project Summary The Summer Research Training Program at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois seeks to identify and facilitate the career progression of veterinary students who have the ability and motivation to become veterinarian medical scientists. The veterinary perspective has high value in biomedical research and there is a relative shortage of veterinarian scientists. Thus, the goals of this veterinary student training program are to help trainees understand the research process, gain research experience, learn scientific communication skills, and identify career opportunities and training pathways. The focus of this training program is translational biomedical research, broadly encompassing the research areas of infectious diseases, reproductive biology, epidemiology, neuroscience, oncology, toxicology, nutrition, and behavior. The productive and collaborative program faculty include 37 mentors from 11 different academic departments in five colleges. The 10-week program is open to veterinary students who have completed one or two years in the professional curriculum. A total of ten trainee positions are available each program year. Trainees are matched with a faculty mentor who shares similar research interests. In collaboration with the faculty mentor, trainees formulate a testable hypothesis, design the experiments, collect and analyze the experimental data, and report the conclusions. Reporting of results includes authoring an abstract that is submitted to a national meeting, preparing a poster presentation of the work, and writing a short manuscript formatted for a scientific journal appropriate for publishing the results. Extensive instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research and Reproducibility and Rigor is provided through orientation week activities and a weekly seminar series. The seminar series also features presentations that highlight career opportunities available to veterinarian medical scientists, field trips to companies that hire veterinarian medical scientists, and an annual symposium with veterinary trainees and faculty from Purdue University. Scientific writing sessions are provided to assist trainees with preparation of the abstract, poster, and manuscript. At the conclusion of the program, trainees present their work at an in-house poster session and at the National Veterinary Scholars Symposium. Follow-up engagement over the course of the student’s DVM training and beyond provides support and mentoring to continue to develop research experience and the potential to pursue a veterinarian-scientist career.