Summer Scholars in Genome Sciences & Medicine

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SUMMARY Students interested in pursuing a career in genome sciences and medicine research will require a strong foundation of core genome sciences technology, analytical skills, and inter-disciplinary training. The overarching goal of this renewal application is to continue to provide a high-quality mentored research experience for promising students in the rapidly growing area of genome sciences and precision medicine. The 10-week summer program centers around a mentored research project in genome sciences and medicine, supplemented with didactic and interactive training, research seminars and career development skills-building. The program is open to all under-represented students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics who are rising sophomores and juniors. In this renewal, we are expanding our current partnership with North Carolina Central University (NCCU), an historically black college and university (HBCU), to include three additional HBCUs in North Carolina to create a core network of students for the summer program. Faculty mentors for this program span a wide range of disciplines in basic and applied genome sciences, data sciences, translational genomic medicine, bioinformatics and computational biology, engineering, and statistics. The research experience will be complemented by a series of research seminars by faculty at Duke and HBCU partners, and visits to sequencing facilities and companies using genome sciences technologies or data in their research in nearby Research Triangle Park, and other science-related community service activities. Given the increased recognition of the importance of data sciences, we are proposing to incorporate more learning opportunities on data sciences specifically to introduce students to some of these tools and work with open access datasets. In addition, students will have the opportunity to consider broader issues impacted by their research through a weekly discussion on the ethical, legal, social, and policy issues and gain important skills such as critical reading of scientific papers, leading a discussion group, conducting literature reviews, and making formal presentations. All students will be required to present their research at the conclusion of the program. We will administer annual surveys to summer scholars to gather information about their educational and career paths in STEM as a measure of the training program's impact. To date, this R25 program has supported 24 students over four summers (no students were accepted in summer 2020 due to Covid restrictions); a majority of students were female and African-American. Several students have successfully continued on in research throughout their undergraduate career and been accepted into leading graduate programs and medical schools around the country. With the proposed changes in this renewal application and our expanded partnerships with other HBCUs in the region, we hope to be responsive to the rapidly changing science and required skillsets and to increase awareness and recruitment for the program. In summary, we aim to continue to offer under-represented students a rich and highly interdisciplinary research experience in genome sciences and medicine.