Medical school can be a grueling four-year journey consisting of never-ending memorization, clinical rotations and sleepless nights. So why do some students extend their medical school status by plunging into a research lab for an extra year of studies?

Its all about the why, explains Dylan Wolman, a medical student at Tufts University School of Medicine. A year of research provides an avenue to practice what should be an essential skill in any scientific field: questioning 'why. It is a thought exercise that will serve you there by teaching you to question why an unexplained symptom in a particular disease constellation occurs, and perhaps even help you develop the spark necessary to pursue that question to its answer, Wolman says.

Wolman and another medical student awardee will immerse themselves in a year of intense lab research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Janelia Farm Research Campus as part of the HHMI Medical Research Fellows Program, a $2.5 million annual initiative to increase the training of future physician-scientists. In all, 70 students from 27 medical schools across the country will participate in the year-long Medical Research Fellows Program. More than 1,400 students have participated in the Medical Research Fellows program since its inception in 1989.

A year spent focused on research has been transformative for many fellows, and shaped their interest and determination to become physician-scientists. Sean B. Carroll

Wolman, who is halfway through his medical studies at Tufts, is taking a year off from medical school to conduct cutting-edge research on brain wiring at Janelia Farm in Ashburn, Virginia. At Janelia Farm, Wolman will use light and electron microscopy techniques to study the neural connectivity between the mouse motor and barrel cortex. He will work under the mentorship of Janelia Farm fellow Davi Bock and group leader Karel Svoboda.

A year spent focused on research has been transformative for many fellows, and shaped their interest and determination to become physician-scientists, says Sean B. Carroll, HHMIs vice president for science education.

One of the medical research fellows will spend a part of his year researching tuberculosis in South Africa. Eric Kalivoda, a student from the University of Vermont College of Medicine, will work at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH), in Durban, South Africa, for several months under the mentorship of HHMI investigator William Jacobs. This is the first time that one of the medical fellows will be spending a portion of the fellowship year at K-RITH.

K-RITH is a groundbreaking collaboration between HHMI and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. K-RITHs mission is to conduct outstanding basic science research on tuberculosis (TB) and HIV, translate the scientific findings into new tools to control TB and HIV, and expand the educational opportunities in the region. Kalivoda will travel to Durban mid-way through his fellowship, and then return to the United States to spend the rest of the year in Jacobs lab at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

K-RITH offers the unique perspective to study and address HIV/XDR-TB at its epicenter, and I look forward to working with my mentor and the K-RITH team of scientists to develop improved diagnostics for rapid TB drug-susceptibility testing, said Kalivoda.

David McMullen, a fellow from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, will spend the year doing research on brain-computer interfaces in a non-HHMI lab at Johns Hopkins University. McMullen will work with Hopkins scientists who are developing brain-computer interface technology as a potential treatment that would help patients with neuromuscular damage regain motor function.

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Seventy Medical Students Take a Year-Long Plunge into Lab Work