New Trainee Support Initiative Helps Students and Postdocs Gain Research Experience and Independence

By Chris Green

Students and scholars in the College of Graduate Health Sciences are encouraged to do independent research projects in addition to the research they conduct with their mentors. Not only does it advance their training, but it also helps them in their future careers, showing employers they have the interest and initiative to move forward on their own.

For years, the college’s trainees struggled to acquire the funding they needed for their independent research, until faculty members recently stepped in to advocate for them, leading to a new initiative to support their projects.

“This is an opportunity for our students and postdoctoral scholars to be creative peripherally to their PI’s research support,” Dean Donald Thomason, PhD, says. “In particular, they can pursue that bright idea that would not be supported under the aims of the current funding. This not only highlights their creativity, but also is a demonstration of their independent thinking.”

Dean Thomas and Greg Harris, assistant vice chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Advancement Services, began talking with alumni and discovered the issue resonated with them. “We learned that alumni are more interested in supporting student and scholar research than studentcentered programs,” Harris says. “Many of them saw the value in that because they either had been in a similar experience with their own research or they couldn’t do their own research because they couldn't find any funding.”

One of those alumni was Bill Kouns, PhD. While working toward his doctoral degree in biochemistry in the early 1990s, Dr. Kouns says his mentor, Lisa Jennings, PhD, let him conduct and present his own research on the side. Helping current students and scholars have the same experience is his way of repaying the freedom he had as a student researcher.

“I love to see students have the support they need to go out and actually present their research, form those networks, and improve their communication skills,” Dr. Kouns says. “I feel like I owe a lot to Dr. Jennings and to the university for the great mentoring they gave me, and this is my way of paying her back and paying the university back for a great education and everything I got from UTHSC.”

By the close of 2022, Dr. Kouns, alumni, and foundations donated more than $100,000 for the initiative. Several alumni who are active with the college agreed to serve on a review committee to read and rank the student research applications. This includes Xudong “Sunny” Wu, PhD, a 2006 graduate in neuroscience, who thought being a reviewer would be a good way to help his alma mater and take part in a program that supports students and postdocs.

“This is obviously a good idea. It will help them gain some independence,” he says. “It might not be much money, but if I had that money when I was a graduate student, it would have been very, very nice.”

After the reviewers submitted their rankings, one student and two postdoctoral scholars were chosen to receive their requested budgets of $5,000-$10,000 to help them with conducting their research, publishing it, traveling to present it at conferences, or other needs.

Two of the recipients are Isaac de Souza Araújo, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bioscience Research, and Rachel Perkins, a fourth-year PhD student in the integrated biomedical sciences program. They are working on a collaborative project they formed after conversations in a break room shared by their labs. “This whole idea came about over lunch,” Perkins said. “I was talking about my work, and he was talking about his work, and we saw some areas that overlap.”

Their research combines the expertise of their respective labs to study the mechanisms of WNT signaling in dental pulp stem cells in the regeneration of mineralized tissue. “With this being a brand-new collaboration, there were not any funds to do this project,” Perkins said. “My mentor works pretty much exclusively on bone and bone cancer; (Dr. Araújo’s) mentor works more on dental materials and revascularization.” Dr. Araújo added, “Since we are in different labs and in different fields, we didn't have the financial support to conduct that research.”

To both Perkins and Dr. Araújo, working on independent research is crucial for improving and demonstrating their self-sufficiency. “As we are looking to take our next steps, people will see that we can get funds and we are able to develop something in an independent way that could really contribute to science,” Dr. Araújo said.

The other award recipient, Mélanie Dacheux, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology, also acknowledges the importance of independent research in advancing in her profession. “It’s a big step toward my own independence,” she said. “For my career, to receive my own funding is a crucial stage.”

Dr. Dacheux’s project is a spinoff of her principal investigator’s research, which focuses on the role of an enzyme called autotaxin in the tumor microenvironment of metastatic melanoma. Dr. Dacheux will investigate whether the results her team has found in mice can be applied to humans. She believes her research could have an important impact on cancer immunotherapy, and without this award, it would not be possible.

As the college plans to continue the trainee support initiative, Dr. Kouns hopes other alumni will see the value and choose to support it, so more students and scholars can get the aid they need. “I hope these alumni never forget where they came from,” he says. “UTHSC is a special school. I had a great experience there, and I just think you should be willing to help UTHSC be the best it can be, because it helped you become the best you could be.”