Fellowships, Scholarships – Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

Regeneron High School Science Talent Search 2019

curiouscat — Fri, 19 Apr 2019 17:21:38 +0000

$3.1 million in prizes was awarded through the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2019, including $2,000 to each of the top 300 scholars and their schools. The top award was for $250,000. If you want to watch the video without knowing the winner, watch it before reading the rest of this post.

Every year the accomplishments of high school students provide amazing hope for the future. I am glad for the organizations that highlight the efforts of these students and provide awards for a few of the most amazing accomplishments. The top 40 students all get at least $25,000 (with the top 10 getting more).

Ana Humphrey, 18, of Alexandria, Virginia, won the top award of $250,000 for her mathematical model to determine the possible locations of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — that may have been missed by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The second place award and $175,000 went to Samuel Weissman 17, of Rosemont, Pennsylvania for his project analyzing the genetic makeup of HIV in two patients on long-term anti-retroviral therapy to understand why they continued to have “reservoirs” of treatment-resistant HIV-infected cells. The third place and $150,000 went to Adam Ardeishar, 17, of Alexandria, Virginia, for his project combining a classic previously unsolved math problem called the “coupon collector problem” with extreme value theory.

To learn more and see about applying next year see the Society for Science site.

International Science Research Scholar Grants

curiouscat — Tue, 24 May 2016 14:52:04 +0000

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation have announced the International Research Scholars Program which aims to support up to 50 outstanding early career scientists worldwide. The program’s aim is to help develop scientific talent worldwide.

The new international competition is seeking top early career researchers from a wide variety of biomedical research fields. Applicants must have started their first independent research position on or after April 1, 2009. Awardees will be invited to participate in research meetings with scientists supported by the funders. These meetings facilitate the exchange of ideas, stimulate new research, and provide an opportunity for collaborative endeavors within the international scientific community.

Awardees will receive a total of $650,000 over five years.
Applications are due June 30, 2016.
Awardees will be notified in April 2017.

HHMI and its partners have committed a total of $37.4 million for the International Research Scholars Program and will award each scientist who is selected a total of $650,000 over five years. The competition is open to scientists who have trained in the U.S. or United Kingdom for at least one year. Additionally, eligible scientists must have run their own labs for less than seven years, and work in one of the eligible countries.

Although Nieng Yan had several grants when she started her lab at Tsinghua University in 2007, she barely had enough money to pay her eight lab members. “In China, there is a limit on the percentage of a grant that you can use to pay people — your graduate students, your postdocs, your technicians, your assistants — to a decent level,” she explains. After struggling to balance her budget for several years, Yan’s scientific achievements and potential landed her an international grant from HHMI in 2012. “The amount of money provided by Hughes is relatively small compared to other programs, but it has the advantage that you can freely decide what to do with it,” says Yan. In fact, HHMI’s science officers encouraged Yan to use her five-year International Early Career Award (IECS) to cover the cost of paying her lab team, explaining that the money could be used in any way that assisted her research. Today, Yan has 15 people working in her lab helping to elucidate the structures of proteins that move molecules in and out of cells. The protein channels and transporters they study are mutated in a number of diseases — including diabetes and cancer — and understanding how they work could help in the development of drugs that block their ill effects. For example, the team recently solved the structure of GLUT1 – a glucose transporter that is often overexpressed in malignant tumor cells. Their data may provide clues for how to inhibit the transporter and perhaps even reveal a way to use it to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs. Photo Credit: Kevin Wolf (AP)

Countries that are not eligible for this competition include the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States), as well as countries identified by the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as being subject to comprehensive country or territory-wide sanctions or where current OFAC regulations prohibit U.S. persons or entities from engaging in the funding arrangements contemplated by this grant program. For this program, such sanctioned countries or territories currently include Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and the Crimea region of Ukraine.

Funding Sources for Independent Postdoctoral Research Projects in Biology

curiouscat — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:53:52 +0000

Here is a nice list of funding sources for independent postdoctoral research projects in biology.

Some examples:

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships. Eligibility: Canadian citizens, foreign citizens – so about everybody
Starting Grants, European Research Council, Europe. “ERC grants are open to researchers of any nationality in the world, any scientific field, any age.”
Max Planck Research Group, Germany – “The Max Planck Society is committed to support Open Access on all levels. We therefore ask applicants to highlight in their list of publications all items which are freely available in an open access repository or on a journal’s website.”
Research Fellowships for Young Scientists, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science – “Young researchers in all fields of the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are eligible to apply.” “This fellowship program is Japan’s core program for cultivating young Japanese researchers. However, there is no nationality requirement for applications.”
NSF Postdoctoral Fellows. For at least some, maybe all, “be a U.S. citizen (or national) or a U.S. permanent resident, i.e., have a “green card,” when applying; “
Research Associateship Programs, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “Citizenship requirements for the NRC Research Associateship Programs vary depending on the sponsoring federal laboratory.”

Directory of select science and engineering scholarships and fellowships for undergraduates, graduates and faculty on our blog.

Starting a Career in Science to Fight Cancer

curiouscat — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:42:32 +0000

Keven Stonewall Preventing Colon Cancer from VNM USA on Vimeo.

Keven Stonewall is a student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison working to prevent colon cancer.

High School Student Creates: Test That is Much More Accurate and 26,000 Times Cheaper Than Existing Pancreatic Cancer Tests

curiouscat — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 23:10:09 +0000

Seeing what these kids come up with is so refreshing after being so disappointed by the actions fo our leaders (politicians, business leaders, financiers, law enforcement [spying on citizens because they feel electronic privacy is fine to invade, taking away liberty…], health care in the USA [twice as expensive as elsewhere with no better results, 10 of millions without coverage]…). These kids make me feel hopeful, unfortunately the actions of the powerful leave me less hopeful.

Jack Andraka created a new paper based test for diagnosing pancreatic cancer that is 50% more accurate, 400 times more sensitive, and 26,000 times less expensive than existing methods. His method uses carbon nanotubes and can catch the disease in very early stages which is critical to treatment success. The test also covers other forms of cancer very effectively (he concentrated on the results for pancreatic cancer given the low survival rates for that cancer). Jack Andraka: “I actually love single-walled carbon nanotubes; they’re like the superheroes of material science.”

His results are great. Often initial results can be difficult to actually turn into such positive results in the real world. But this is a great step and it is great to see what young minds can do. The claims for how much better, cheaper etc. are wildly different in various places on the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) site.

Jack Andraka was awarded $75,000 for his development of a new method to detect pancreatic cancer as the winner of the top prize at the Intel ISEF (I believe it is new this year to call the winner the Gordon E. Moore Award).

A Novel Paper Sensor for the Detection of Pancreatic Cancer by Jack Andraka
North County High School, Glen Burnie, MD

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with a five-year survival rate of 5.5%. One reason for this is the lack of a rapid, sensitive, inexpensive screening method. A novel paper sensor is described that simply, rapidly and inexpensively screens for pancreatic cancer. Mia Paca cells overexpressing mesothelin, a biomarker for pancreatic cancer, were cultured; mesothelin was isolated, concentrated and quantified with ELISA. After optimization with the Western Blot assay, the antibody to human mesothelin was dispersed with single walled carbon nanotubes. This dispersion was used to dip-coat strips of filter paper, rendering the paper conductive.

Optimal layering was determined using a scanning electron microscope. Cell media spiked with varying amounts of mesothelin was applied to the paper biosensor. Change in electrical potential was measured before and after application and a dose-response curve was constructed with an R2 value of 99.92%. In vivo tests on human blood serum obtained from healthy people and patients with chronic pancreatitis, PanIn, pancreatic cancer revealed the same trends. The sensor’s limit of detection was found to be 0.156 ng/mL, satisfying the limit of 10 ng/mL, the level considered an overexpression of mesothelin consistent with pancreatic cancer.

The sensor costs $3.00; 10 tests can be performed per strip. A test takes 5 minutes and is 168 times faster, 26,667 times less expensive, and 400 times more sensitive than ELISA, 25% to 50% more accurate than the CA10-9 test and is a sensitive, accurate, inexpensive, and rapid screening tool to detect mesothelin, a biomarker for pancreatic cancer.

Career Prospect for Engineers Continues to Look Positive

curiouscat — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:27:36 +0000

As I have written previously the career prospects for engineers are bright around the globe. Many countries realize the importance of engineering and have taken steps to compete as a center of excellence for engineering. It is a smart economic policy. Ironically, the USA, that did such a great job at this in the 1960’s and 1970’s, has been falling down in this regard. A significant reason for this is the USA can only fund so many things and a broken health care system, military complex, bailouts to bankers (trust fund babies and others) cost a lot of money. You chose what to fund, and those are taking much of the available USA funds. There are also non-economic reasons, such as the turn in the last decade in the USA to make the barriers for foreigner engineers (and others) to go through to go to school, visit and stay in the USA have all increased dramatically.

Back to the prospects for engineers: their are shortages of good engineers all over (and the future projections don’t show any reason to believe this will change). Germany Faces a Shortage of Engineers:

In June, the Association of German Engineers (VDI) reported that there were 76 400 vacant engineering jobs—an all-time high.
…
Policymakers in Berlin have responded to the shortage of skilled workers with a number of measures, including changes in immigration rules that allow German companies to hire engineers from other countries, including those outside of the European Union. Among them: The annual salary that companies must pay foreigners has been lowered from 60,000 Euro (US $95,000) to 40,000 Euro, which is roughly the starting salary of an engineering graduate in Germany…

To make it easy for engineers to move around Europe, engineering associations and other groups across Europe are working with the European Commission (the executive arm of the European Union) to launch the new Engineering Card. The card, which German engineers can apply for now and other countries are planning to launch, provides standardized information about the engineer’s qualifications and skills for greater transparency.
…
“We don’t expect many engineers will come, because among other reasons, there is a shortage of engineers across Europe,”

On other topics the article states:

The dropout rate among electrical engineering students in Germany is 50 percent, according to Schanz. “There is much more potential to increase the number of engineers by investing in dropouts rather than trying to attract young people who are less interested in engineering
…
Another challenge is attracting more women to engineering. Germany today has around a million engineers, 13 percent of whom are women, up from around 10 percent a decade ago.

Both of these are issues globally and care should be taken to take steps to address them. There are some excellent science and engineering fellowship and scholarship offers (including significant commitments by the USA government, they are not eliminating all support for engineering, just reducing what it was before while other countries increase similar investments).

Great Projects From First Google Science Fair Finalists

curiouscat — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:54:18 +0000

15 finalists (from 3 different age groups – 13-14 years old, 15-16 and 17-18) were selected. 11 finalists were from the USA and 1 each from Singapore, Canada, India and South Africa. These examples of what can be done with imagination, effort and a scientific mindset is great.

The grand prize winner, Shree Boseer’s project:

Each year, over 21,000 women are diagnosed with ovariancancer – the 5th leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women in the United States. One of the most common drugs usedin ovarian cancer chemotherapy is cisplatin, a platinum-based chemotherapy treatment. While the drug affects ordinary cells, the significantly higher replication frequency of cancer cells causes cisplatin to have a greater impact in malignant cells. However, cancer cells often develop resistance to cisplatin, rendering the treatment ineffective. To improve the efficiency of cisplatin treatment, this research sought to determine whether AMP kinase, an energy protein of cell, plays a role in the development of cisplatin resistance. Studies with various techniques showed a significant difference on cell death caused by cisplatin insensitive and resistant ovarian cancer cells when AMPK was inhibited,suggesting that AMPK plays a role in the development of resistance. This work,in addition to offering a new treatment regime, also furthers our understanding of ovarian cancer and cancers in general.

This is a great project and the experience for the students is wonderful. Still I do think the prizes should be much larger given all the large corporations involved. Get involved with the next Google Science fair.

Google Science Fair 2011 Projects semi finalists – Intel Science and Engineering Fair 2009 Webcasts – Hats off to the winners of the inaugural Google Science Fair – President Obama Speaks on Getting Students Excited About Science and Engineering

Students Will Spend Year Doing Career-Changing Research Thanks to HHMI

curiouscat — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:29:18 +0000

This year, 116 medical, dental, and veterinary students from 47 schools across the country will take a break from memorizing molecular metabolism and studying drug interactions to spend a year in a lab doing hands-on research. The break from regular coursework, funded through a $4 million Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) initiative, is intended to give students an opportunity to immerse themselves in science and consider whether they want to pursue a career as a physician-scientist.

Nearly 500 medical students applied for the research year through the HHMI-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medical Research Scholars and HHMI Medical Research Fellows programs. Both efforts seek to strengthen and expand the pool of medically-trained researchers. The funding HHMI provides is a great resource.

“We want medical, dental, and veterinary students to become immersed in the life of academic science for at least a year. And we hope they get so engaged in the process and life of scientific research that they will decide to continue it for the rest of their lives,” says Peter Bruns, HHMI’s vice president for grants and special programs. “We need more doctors who do basic research to improve human health.”

As part of its commitment to fostering the translation of basic research discoveries into improved diagnoses and treatments, HHMI has developed a range of programs to nurture the careers of researchers who bridge the gap between clinical medicine and basic science. In addition to the programs for medical students, the Institute supports medical training for Ph.D. students in the basic sciences and has made specific efforts to fund top physician-scientists as HHMI investigators.

The medical research scholars and fellows programs are open to medical, dental, and veterinary students enrolled in U.S. schools. Most have completed the second or third year of their professional program when they spend a year working in a lab either at the NIH or at an academic medical center or research university they select. During the last 25 years, more than 2,100 students have participated.

The HHMI Medical Research Fellowships program allows medical, dental, and veterinary students to pursue biomedical research at a laboratory anywhere in the United States except the NIH campus in Bethesda. Each student submits a research plan to work in a specific lab with a mentor they have identified. Since 1989, about 1,200 students have participated.

This year, 74 students from 26 medical schools and two veterinary schools were chosen as fellows from a pool of 274. While most students elect to stay at their home institution to do their research, this year 17 fellows will work in labs at a different school. Their research topics include schizophrenia, wound healing, organ development, and many other important biological questions.

The HHMI-NIH Research Scholars program was established in 1985 to encourage medical students to pursue research by allowing them to take a year off from their medical studies. The program has since been expanded to include dental and veterinary students. It has enabled about 1,000 students to work in NIH labs.

Students selected as research scholars often enter the program with only a general idea of what type of research they would like to do. As soon as they are accepted, they begin researching the more than 1,100 laboratories at NIH. They meet with a number potential mentors before finalizing which project to pursue under the guidance of their NIH advisor and HHMI’s staff. The students are sometimes called “cloister scholars” because they live in apartments or dorm-style rooms in a refurbished cloister on the NIH campus in Bethesda.

This year, 42 students from 28 medical schools and one veterinary school were chosen as research scholars. More than 200 students from 93 schools applied.

HHMI Expands Support of Postdoctoral Scientists

curiouscat — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:21:04 +0000

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute provides a huge amount of science and health care related funding. HHMI is expanding existing relationships to fund postdoc scientist fellows at with Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The funding should support 32 additional postdoc scientists. HHMI Expands Support of Postdoctoral Scientists

Fellows will be selected competitively by each organization. Each fellowship will have a three-year term. When the initiative is at full capacity, HHMI will be supporting 96 postdoctoral fellows at an anticipated annual cost of about $5 million. The program began in 2007 when HHMI announced it would fund up to 16 postdoctoral fellows in HHMI labs each year. There is no requirement that future fellows be appointed in HHMI labs.