NIH awards $746k grant to encourage minority graduates to pursue doctorates in biomedicine

The National Institutes of Health have awarded a $746,702 grant to three faculty members to establish a program to encourage underrepresented minorities with recent bachelor’s degrees to pursue doctorates in disciplines related to biomedicine.

Participants in the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) will work for a year as interns in selected research laboratories on campus and will also participate in professional development and educational activities. The program proposal was developed by Surita Bhatia, associate professor of Chemical Engineering, Lynmarie Thompson, associate professor of Chemistry, and Sandra Petersen, associate dean of the Graduate School and professor of Biology.

According to Petersen, the PREP program will build upon the campus’ strength in interdisciplinary research through activities coordinated with the Chemistry-Biology Interface, the Institute for Cellular Engineering and the Center for Neuroendocrine Studies graduate education and training programs. The program will serve 10 PREP students annually during the two-year pilot phase of the project. After two years, the campus can apply for eight more years of funding, said Petersen.

The program is housed in the Graduate School and coordinated with activities of the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NEAGEP), an National Science Foundation-funded alliance of 10 research-extensive universities aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented minorities obtaining doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and the number going on to postdoctoral and faculty positions.

UMass Amherst leads the 15-institution alliance and students are recruited through the close ties that have developed over the 10 years since the program was established. Like UMass Amherst, nine of the schools—MIT, Boston University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, and the universities of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine—are research institutions. The other five are minority-serving institutions: Bennett College, Medgar Evers College, Lincoln University, Jackson State University and the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez.

Prospective interns for the fall are being selected from a group of students participating in the NEAGEP Summer Program for Undergraduate Research that began June 1, says Petersen. The funds for the biomedical internships will free up enough funding for the campus to host five or more NEAGEP interns in other fields of research, she says.

“This program is expected to strengthen the research skills and academic competitiveness of participants for pursuit of graduate degrees while also stimulating interest in addressing the health problems that disproportionately affect minorities and the medically underserved in the United States,” she says.

June 24, 2009.

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