Program Overview

As a member of PREP@UC, you will join a community of laboratory-based research scientists who have the common goal of making new discoveries to advance our understanding of human disease and approaches to treatment. You will work alongside graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff scientists in the laboratory of a faculty mentor from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (UCCOM) or Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC). In this way, you will experience life as a scientist while gaining the laboratory skills and experience needed to conduct biomedical research.

Additionally, you will receive intensive training in other professional skills that are key to a successful career in biomedical research, extensive individualized mentoring, guidance with career planning, and assistance with applications to doctoral programs. Some of the training will occur in the setting of a dedicated PREP journal club other activities will involve graduate school courses and social programs. 

Importantly, you will meet junior and senior scientists who will become part of your professional and social networks. In short you will become part of a scientific community

Activities

Research

• You will spend 75% of your time working in the laboratory on your own research project.
• You will choose to work with one of our 23 faculty mentors. They, and members of their laboratory, will teach you new laboratory skills and help you develop your research project.
• You will learn to design experiments, analyze results and present your data in lab meetings
• You will attend research seminars with lab members and other PREP Scholars
• You will present your work at one national scientific meeting, e.g. ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students) or the SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans) meeting

Professional Development

• Dedicated two week intensive PREP lab techniques course upon arrival in Cincinnati
• Work with Program Directors to prepare and update your Individual Development Plan (IDP) to map out your career goals and how to achieve them
• Attend PhD PREP meetings throughout the year. Topics to be covered include: reading and presenting scientific papers, oral research presentations and poster presentations, scientific writing, preparation of Grad School applications, practice interviews
• Take a graduate level class (likely Molecular and Cellular Biology) to grow your scientific background and build credentials for Grad School applications
• Learn about the many career options open to PhD level biomedical scientists by attending the Careers in Biomedical Sciences course and talking to course presenters. Presenters come from a wide range of biomedical careers including in large and small biotech and Pharma companies, government, regulatory affairs, scientific writing and academia.

Mentoring

• You will have a mentoring team to guide you in your development as a scientist at a large academic health sciences center.
  
• Scientific mentoring will come from your faculty research mentor and an "in lab mentor". The in lab mentor will likely be a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow in your lab.
• For more general mentoring you will have a faculty diversity mentor who can advise you about navigating your pathway through PREP and beyond. You will also have a graduate student near-peer mentor, probably a past PREP Scholar or a member of Cincy-SACNAS, who will help you engage with other students and learn your way around Cincinnati
• Best of all, you will be part of a cohort of PREP Scholars so you will have peers with whom to work and play

Family Involvement

We want your family to understand and celebrate your Cincinnati PREP experience.  Family members will be invited to UC to learn about the program soon after you arrive in Cincinnati and to come back to hear you give a capstone presentation the following May.