Research Support for Biomedical Careers at CCNY

描述（申请人提供）：CCNY RISE项目支持本科生、硕士和博士研究生。自上一个资助期以来，我们在本科生和硕士生毕业后进入博士课程方面取得了重大进展。博士生的及时毕业和毕业生的就业安置仍然是RISE项目的重要组成部分。我们认为，促进学生进入博士课程的进展反映了更严格的候选人选拔过程，以筛选已经致力于医学事业或与生物医学研究无关的其他领域的学生。因此，加强候选人选择和建议的过程是本提案中RISE计划的基石之一。我们还将采取比以往更积极主动的招聘方式。与以往一样，学生将被安排在CCNY的实验室里，在化学系、生物化学系、生物系、物理系和地球科学系的老师的指导下进行研究项目。然而，在下一个资助期，由于纽约城市大学最近倡议发展科学基础设施，特别是在迅速扩大的结构生物学领域，学生将有机会获得大大增加的导师池。选择从事结构生物学项目的学生将有机会在新建的纽约结构生物学中心使用最先进的生物分子结构分析仪器。此外，城市学院最近与纪念斯隆凯特琳癌症中心建立了合作伙伴关系，为学生创造了在国际公认的癌症中心获得癌症研究实践经验的新机会。与合作伙伴一起，城市学院开发了癌症生物学和生物技术的新课程，这将激发人们对癌症研究的更多认识和兴趣。其中有一门独特的社会营销课程，让学生与哈莱姆的少数民族社区直接互动，以解决与癌症发病率和预防有关的健康差异问题。由于RISE是一个少数民族服务项目，我们希望这将使学生以更个性化的方式与该领域建立联系。我们预计，这也将打开一个新的行为研究领域，可以作为一个常规的一部分，在未来的崛起计划。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The RISE program at CCNY supports undergraduate, masters and doctoral students. Since the previous funding period we have made significant progress in graduating undergraduates and masters students who entered doctoral programs after graduation. Graduation of doctoral students in a timely manner and job placement of the graduates remains a strong part of the RISE program. We believe that the progress in promoting of students into doctoral programs reflects a more stringent candidate selection process to screen out students who are already committed to medical careers or careers in other fields unrelated to biomedical research. For this reason, strengthening the processes of candidate selection and advisement is one of the cornerstones of the RISE program in the present proposal. We will also institute a more proactive approach to candidate recruitment than has been true before. As in the past, students will be placed in laboratories at CCNY where they will carry out research projects under the mentorship of faculty in the departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biology, Physics and Earth Science. However, in the next funding period students will have access to a greatly enhanced pool of mentors owing to a recent initiative by the City University of New York to develop infrastructure in the sciences, particularly in the rapidly expanding area of structural biology. Students who choose to work on projects in structural biology will have access to state-of-the-art instrumentation for structural analyses of biomolecules at the newly constructed New York Structural Biology Center. In addition, City College has recently established a partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that has created new opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience in cancer research at an internationally recognized cancer center. In conjunction with the partnership, City College has developed new courses in cancer biology and biotechnology that will spur greater awareness of, and interest in, cancer research. Among these is a unique course in social marketing that involves students in direct interaction with the minority community in Harlem to address issues of health disparities relating to cancer incidence and prevention. Since RISE is a minority serving program we anticipate that this will allow students to connect to the field in a more personal way. We anticipate that this will also open a new area of behavioral research that can be incorporated as a regular part of the RISE program in the future. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Cancer, and many other diseases disproportionately affect minority populations which results in disparities with regard to both disease incidence and treatment outcomes. The RISE program helps to address these health disparities by training minority scientists and promoting their entry into careers in biomedical research.