START@Yale

To ensure the safety of our students, our staff and our faculty, we offer virtual START (v-Summer To Advance Research Training) for the summer of 2020.

Although it will not be possible to provide mentored research training in 2020, v-START will enable entering students to participate remotely in the same type of weekly journal club sessions as have been held in the traditional START program. Eight one-hour Zoom sessions will be held from mid-June to early August. Students will present a recent representative paper from their v-mentor’s research group at one of the weekly v-START Zoom sessions. The student and the v-mentor will review the manuscript together; the student will prepare slides and then practice the presentation with both the student mentors and the faculty mentor. After each student presentation, the v-mentor will then discuss his/her career trajectory, and describe the work of his/her lab or research group. The manuscript to be discussed will be sent to all v-START participants the week before each session. Questions will be sent in real-time for discussion.

In addition, working with their v-mentors and our student mentors, students will develop a 3-4 page research proposal describing a potential project he/she might possibly perform in the mentor’s research group in the future. Ideally, although not necessarily, this proposal would address a hypothesis generated by the journal club manuscript, and would include hypotheses and specific aims, short literature review with identification of gaps in knowledge to be addressed, experimental design and interpretation of possible outcomes.

Finally, all START students will give 10 minute presentations of their research proposals at the START zoom symposium to be held on Wednesday, 5 August 2020.

v-START is appropriate for those with substantial research experience, as well as those with little or no prior experience in biomedical research.

The overarching goal of START@Yale remains to encourage interest in physician-scientist careers among entering medical students. Virtual START 2020 will support this goal by introducing our newest students to the extraordinary range of outstanding science at YSM. Although we are unable to provide students with hands-on research training in New Haven this summer, we hope to bring the excitement of Yale research to our students wherever they may be.

Director
Laura R. Ment, MD, Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology, Associate Dean 

Associate Director 
Peter S. Aronson, MD, Associate Director MD/PhD Program 

Student Mentors

• Divya Ramakrishnan 
• Samuel Liburd
• Josiah Sherman