A five-year grant will help two Delaware State University professors create a training program to prepare students for biomedical research careers.
Dr. Hacene Boukari, a professor of physics and engineering and Dr. Karl Miletti, an associate professor of biological sciences will use the nearly $2 million grant to establish a U-RISE training site at DSU.
U-RISE stands for Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement.
Dr. Boukari says it’s an increasingly important field in the healthcare system.
"That's the basic research for developing new treatments," said Boukari. "We can see that on the current crisis we have in COVID-19 and get the whole community to devise and develop approaches to treat diseases, handle diseases, discovery in new therapeutics, and technologies."
According to Boukari up to 36 students will receive training over the period of the five-year-grant.
"First, it will support students, train them and mentor them to pursue careers in a particular field starting with a PhD degree, and they would like to enter this program, it will support them for two years. Boukari said.
Boukari is one of the grant recipients. He says the program is focused solely on research.
"I just want to point out this program is not meant to train medical doctors. It's much more for PhD degrees in research." said Boukai. "So it's really research-oriented people who would like to develop the next generation of technology therapeutics, the next tools to go after diseases,so to speak."
The expectation is that the early research experiences will increase retention and motivate more students toward careers in research.
