Wright State grabs $2.1M in biomedical-education grants

Wright State University‘s Boonshoft School of Medicine has been awarded $2.1 million in federal grants to support biomedical science education.

The multi-year funding from the National Institutes of Health will go toward one already-established program that aims to prepare college students for careers in bioscience and a similar program that’s set to launch this year, according to a statement from Wright State.

Nearly $700,000 of the grant amount will fund Wright State’s “Streams” program through 2015. Streams was founded in 1994 and allows college students from across the country to spend a summer working with faculty mentors to conduct biomedical research in university laboratories. The program was created to encourage members of underrepresented minorities to consider and prepare for careers in biomedical research, according to the statement.

Seventy-four percent of the program’s more than 150 graduates are completing or currently enrolled in advanced degree programs.

That success has inspired Wright State to launch a similar program for recent college graduates. Wright State received about $1.4 million to create and fund through 2014 the new program, called “Grad-Prep.” The new program will provide students with a year of intensive research and academic training in the biomedical or behavioral sciences, with the goal of preparing them for Ph.D. programs. Participants must have earned an undergraduate science degree within 36 months of beginning the program.

Grad-Prep is scheduled to begin this year with eight students, according to the statement.