Enhancing Student Diversity in Drug Addiction Research

描述：个人滥用药物对社会的深远有害影响是众所周知的。为了应对开发新的有效治疗方法以帮助那些屈服于药物使用和滥用诱惑的人的挑战，我们需要激励下一代学生追求该领域的研究事业。目前在药物滥用领域代表性不足的学生群体的需要尤为迫切。已发表的分析表明，让本科生接触实验室研究，特别是在他们职业生涯的早期，是培养他们对实验室研究兴趣的一种非常有效的方式。 研究作为职业。自1989年以来，明尼苏达大学已经认识到并通过提供生物医学科学的夏季住宅研究计划来应对这一挑战。这项提案是为这些暑期项目的药物滥用部分提供资金，我们将培训五名完成大学一年级或二年级学业的本科生。我们将在全国范围内招收学生，重点是来自生物医学研究专业代表性不足的群体的学生。我们将为他们提供为期10周的密集研究体验，其中包括专业指导（学术生存技能和研究生院的准备）以及研究伦理研讨会。我们的目标是激励新一代的药物滥用研究人员。反过来，我们期望这些人成为致力于解决神经系统功能障碍的医学问题的研究基础设施的一部分

DESCRIPTION: The profound detrimental impact to society from individuals abusing drugs is well established. To meet the challenge of developing new and effective treatments to help those that have succumbed to the temptation of drug use and abuse, we need to inspire the next generation of students to pursue research careers in the field. The need is particularly acute among populations of students who are currently underrepresented in the field of drug abuse. Published analyses indicate that exposing undergraduate students, especially early in their career, to laboratory research is an extremely effective way for developing their interest in research as a profession. Since 1989, the University of Minnesota of has recognized and met this challenge by offering summer residential research programs in the biomedical sciences. This proposal is to fund a drug abuse component to these summer programs in which we will train five undergraduate students who have completed their freshman or sophomore years in college. We will recruit students nationally, focusing on students from groups that are underrepresented within the biomedical research profession. We will provide them with a 10-week intensive research experience that will include professional mentoring (academic survival skills and preparation for graduate school) as well as workshops on research ethics. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of drug abuse researchers. In turn, we expect these individuals to become part of the research infrastructure dedicated to solving medical problems of nervous system dysfunction