Undergraduate Research Experiences in Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics

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The proposed program is to provide a summer research experience in next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis for neurogenetics and neurogenomics for 10 undergraduate students. NGS has transformed the field of genomics and is increasingly permeating all aspects of biosciences research and medicine. Using NGS to understand the brain and neurological disease is one of the major frontiers in biomedical science and will drive advances in the field in the near future and for decades to come. There will be a huge need for researchers in neuroscience with strong data analysis skills relevant to genomics. This need is evident in the increasing emphasis on quantitative analysis skills in biosciences graduate programs as well as in biomedical professional schools. To address this need, we will establish the program called “Bruins in Genomics in Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics (BIG­NGG)”. It will leverage the infrastructure of an existing summer program “Bruins in Genomics (BIG­Summer)”, supported by the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences (QCB) at UCLA, and the QCB Collaboratory. BIG­ Summer consists of a combination of practical workshop tutorials that focus on NGS data analysis skills, and a hands-on research experience in genomics. The proposed R25 program will allow 10 additional students to participate in BIG, and specifically to learn about the growing and cutting-edge research field of neurogenetics and neurogenomics. The students will be quantitative or biosciences majors entering their junior and senior years. We expect that many of our participants will have this research experience serve as a launching point for continuing in biomedical research in either quantitative biosciences Ph.D. programs such as a Bioinformatics Ph.D. program or a Neuroscience Ph.D. program.