Laboratory-Based Biomedical Research

Lillian Nanney, Ph.D.	Area Leader
	lillian.nanney@vanderbilt.edu (615) 322-7265 Office Hours: TBA

How would experience in this area be beneficial to my career ?

• Create advancements that push forward the frontiers in medicine
• Practice with tools/skills that equip you to make lab discoveries in the future
• Appreciate how teamwork facilitates the discovery process in the lab
• Gain experience at testing an hypothesis to prove it true or false 
• Build an in-depth knowledge base in a focused area of medicine
• Learn how to convert ideas into a concrete reality
• Learn how to communicate discoveries to scientific colleagues
• Practice evaluting scientific literature to become a better judge of published evidence that might change your medical practice

Description of Area
Experiences will be focused on hypothesis-driven investigation in a basic laboratory environment. Each student will become a member of an active research program and will gradually define his/her project throughout the spring semester. Full-time research will be performed during the summer after the VMS1 year. The laboratory based group will meet every other week throughout this time and will engage in small group discussions and topics designed to maximize the laboratory experience and help students realize the pivotal role of basic research in answering pressing questions in the clinical setting.

Nature of the Student Experience
During the spring of the VMS1, the student will become oriented to the lab team, become familiar with the relevant background literature, participate in simple experiments, learn some new techniques and complete requirements for IACUC or the IRB as necessary. During April, each student will present a short oral presentation of his/her goals and plans for the project to the lab-based small group and the Area Head. Early in the summer, the student will meet with a mentoring committee consisting of a member of the Laboratory based faculty committee, the student’s mentor and one other faculty member. This committee will provide insightful suggestions and inputs designed to enhance the lab experience (methods of analysis) and determine if there are any barriers to student productivity.

Group meetings with the lab-based students will continue on a weekly basis throughout the 8 weeks of the summer. The summer exposure to full-time lab research is intended to develop the skills that are necessary to plan your own experiments, develop competency in several laboratory skills and gain experience in the organization and analysis of data. A weekly seminar series during the summer will build comraderie amongst the lab-based group and cover relevant topics such as who should achieve authorship status, ethics in lab research, question and answer sessions with role models who are pursuing careers with a lab-based component.

In the early fall, each student will have a confidential session with the Area Head to assess the accomplishments of the summer, the status of the student:mentor relationship and the updated plans for completion of the project during the VMSII year. Each student will continue to devote 2 half days per week toward completion of the project. In November, each student will practice his/her communication skills by presenting a 10 minute scientific oral presentation to the lab based small group. During the spring semester, each student will wrap up the research, write a scientific abstract and present a poster during the final emphasis finale day. Most students and mentors have the expectation that the data from the project will either become included in a scientific publication or ideally result in first authored publication.