Julian Solway, MD, ITM Director and Dean for Translational Medicine, Biological Sciences Division, is leading a multimillion-dollar Burroughs Wellcome Fund grant to provide students stipends and scholarships and remove barriers to entering the translational research field.
ITM investigator Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, UChicago Medicine’s Assistant Dean for Scholarship and Discovery, is part of that grant, and she was also awarded a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test a virtual mentorship program designed to help female and underrepresented minority medical students interested in pursuing research careers.
“We’ve made progress to diversify our medical student population, but several barriers prevent women and diverse students from choosing research careers,” Arora said. “All research is personal, and if we only have scientific ideas emanating from one segment of our demographic, we will never solve the ills of all people.”