UCI Summer Institute in Neuroscience Trains Tomorrow’s Leaders in Brain Science

UCI Summer Institute in Neuroscience Trains Tomorrow’s Leaders in Brain Science

This past summer, the CNLM hosted their first in-person summer program since the start of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, the Summer Institute in Neuroscience program. Twenty-four students from around the country participated in this 8-week residential research program. In addition to conducting research, the students participated in cohort-wide activities including workshops on neuroscience methods, professional development opportunities, seminars by faculty and, of course, socials.

Student projects covered a wide range of topics including the impact of trauma on the brain, the effect of early life adversity on memory circuits, mechanisms of neuronal injury in the fruit fly (drosophila), the role of sleep in memory and forgetting, the relationship between Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease, individual differences in spatial navigation, and brain circuits involved in addiction.

“At the core of the Irvine Summer Institute in Neuroscience is a large body of science e ducation research suggesting that participating in authentic, meaningful science research can have significant impacts on the success of junior scholars in science,” says Manuella Oliveira Yassa, Director of the Summer Institute. “By participating in this program, students engage with real scientists in laboratories where their work contributes to important discoveries.”

Just as important as the research the students conduct is the quality of the mentorship that they receive from graduate students and faculty. “Our summer scholars are paired with mentors and lab environments that equally prioritize research excellence and responsible mentorship,” says Dr. Autumn Ivy, CNLM Fellow and Principal Investigator of one of the funding grants supporting the program. “This is hugely important to the mission of this program—to not only provide a rigorous neuroscience research experience, but also to foster mentor-mentee relationships with their faculty mentor that can support the scholars’ potential research careers beyond their time with us.”

“This program was about more than the research for me. It was also about the lifelong connections I made with my mentors, fellow cohort, and other graduate students.”