Jun 9 2010
For 10 weeks this summer, 16 students from universities across the country will join the highly competitive Johns Hopkins Institute for Nanobiotechnology (INBT) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). The internship is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is supported and administered by INBT.
This is the third year of INBT’s REU program, and this group represents the institute’s largest group. Students are being mentored by faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in INBT affiliated laboratories across Hopkins. At the end of the 10-week research program, they will present their findings at a university-wide collaborative research poster session held with other summer interns from across several divisions.
In November 2009, NSF reported that over the last decade 10 times more white students will have earned doctoral degrees in science and engineering disciplines than minority students. Acknowledging this fact yet resolving not to accept it as status quo, INBT has employed aggressive measures to increase the number of individuals from underrepresented groups who apply to its educational programs.
“The nanobiotechnology REU has been one of the most successful and popular programs for INBT,” says Ashanti Edwards, senior education program coordinator for the institute. “The program has consistently attracted the best and the brightest students interested in research from top universities across the nation. The REU program was launched as a conduit to attract highly talented and motivated research students to pursue academic careers in research, particularly women and minority scholars. The program is highly competitive. For summer 2010, the number of applicants for the 10 slots in the program rose to nearly 500, twice what it had been the year before.”