The Summer Student Research Program (SSRP) of the Harvard Program in Neonatology (HPN) is administered by the Division of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. The SSRP provides undergraduate students with an intensive laboratory and clinical research experience under the guidance of faculty and fellow mentors. Some of the many topics within neonatal research our mentors focus on include nutrition, radiology, lung vascular biology, epigenetics of fetal growth, rare disease, epigenetic mechanisms, and more. Students who enroll in the program will be appropriately matched with mentors based on their research interests expressed in their application.
Research
Program students conduct work on a clinical, epidemiologic, or basic science research project under the direction of a mentor. Areas of study include developmental biology (vascular biology, nervous system development, molecular genetics), clinical research, and epidemiology/public health policy. The mentor guides the student through a summer-long experiment. At the end of the summer, students are required to present a short PowerPoint talk to the rest of the group that provides a summary of their research.
Clinical exposure
As a supplement to the research experience, students are given the opportunity to observe the HPN's health care teams care for patients. Students will have the opportunity to observe in the newborn nurseries, labor and delivery units, neonatal intensive care units, Center for Healthy Infant Lung Development, and NICU Growth and Developmental Support Program (NICU GraDS) at Boston Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The duration of an observation is between four and eight hours. At each hospital a faculty member or fellow is available to precept the student.
Conferences
In addition to laboratory experience, students have the opportunity to attend weekly conferences. The conferences cover topics in newborn medicine in the areas of basic science and clinical correlation, newborn epidemiology, and newborn medicine research.
Clinical case presentations/bedside-to-bench rounds
Each week, a small group of students will learn about a patient in the NICU. They will present a summary of the patient’s clinical course and summarize the disease to the rest of the students. This weekly session is mentored by a faculty member. This highly interactive tutorial is designed to provide students with insight into the pathophysiology and clinical management of specific neonatal diseases. Students will present their assigned clinical case to the group during the following week’s clinical case presentation session.
Duration
Each student should plan to dedicate eight consecutive weeks, between June 1 and Aug. 31, with a 35-hour commitment per week. Scheduling conflicts may be worked out with mentors on an individual basis.
Funding
In addition to the highly competitive and unique program that students experience, students will be compensated at an hourly rate, determined by their level of education, to help offset the living expenses of Boston.