SIP supports students from underrepresented racial and economic backgrounds and students with disabilities to conduct research in laboratories at Johns Hopkins as part of an immersive 10-week program. The Department of Neuroscience and the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute support these summer internships for undergraduate students considering graduate studies in neuroscience and related areas. NeuroSIP students intern in laboratories of primary faculty members in the Department of Neuroscience; Kavli SIP students intern in laboratories of Kavli NDI faculty. SIP students are guided by faculty mentors in independent research projects and present their work at a poster session at the end of the summer as part of an institution-wide symposium. The projects that SIP students take on are an opportunity to learn about the research process and give students a sense of ownership of their original work. Many go on to present their summer research at national conferences such as ABRCMS, SACNAS, and LANS, among others.
The Department of Neuroscience also invests in the career training and professional development of undergraduate mentees. SIP students are assigned individual graduate student mentors to advise them on navigating academic environments and applying for graduate and professional school. In addition, all undergraduate researchers in labs affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience are invited to weekly summer lunches organized by members of the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion focused on issues such as giving scientific presentations, applying to graduate school and to fellowships, and career networking.
The application for both SIP programs can be found here. Additional programs also support undergraduate interns in the Department of Neuroscience. Please look here for a partial list of such programs.
Mauricio Garcia, University of Colorado - Denver, Denver CO
Faculty mentor: Hey-Kyoung Lee
Dalissa Negron-Figuero, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Pedras Campus
Faculty mentor: Jeremiah Cohen
Laurianne Pene, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI
Faculty mentor: Alex Koldokin
Summer 2019
Beloved Adenuga, Howard University, Washington, DC
Faculty mentor: Richard Huganir
Project: Mapping the protein-protein interaction of BTBD11 and PSD-95 using the yeast two-hybrid system
Alex Maya-Romero, King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, PA
Faculty mentor: Paul Worley
Project: Homer1: a regulator of Rheb in upstream mTORC1 signaling
Jonathan Moran, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus
Faculty mentor: Solange Brown
Project: 3D relationships among axonal projections in the thalamus
Cailyn Robertson, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Faculty mentor: Mohamad Farah
Project: Pharmacological inhibition of BACE1 in a mouse model of ALS
Summer 2018
Matilde Castro, University of Texas at Austin
Faculty mentor: Richard Huganir
Project: Effects of CRMP2 deletion on hippocampal learning in a T-maze
Current Position: Neuroscience PhD student, Johns Hopkins