Program Overview

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Program Schedule

  • May - June: Onboarding Process / Initial Training

  • June - August: Project Immersion

  • End of August 31: Staff Wrap-Up & Reflection

 

Typical Weekly Schedule

30 hours per week of directed research with your PIs. Additional special events might include:

  • Monday: Fireside chat with a PI

  • Tuesday: Study group for data science topics

  • Wednesday: Group call with staff

  • Thursday: Department meeting with you PI and other staff members

  • Friday: Meet with fellow research trainees during weekly one-on-one check-in call

 

Program Specifics

The nature and subject of the work will vary across the teams and projects, but will reflect data science tasks that are often assigned to Harvard Medical School students during clinical research. Once admitted, you will be required to go through online training for Good Clinical Practice (GCP) (funded by the internship) for IRB certification and also privacy and data training for HIPAA, allowing you to access confidential patient data. This is a useful certification for anyone looking to perform clinical research in the future.

Some points of note:

  • All our PI’s have faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School; they are stars in the medical world.

  • We expect to match 1-3 research assistants to each PI so that you will work as part of a team.

  • Each week you will be expected to do something in the order of 30 hours of research work for your PI and the rest of your time is for training and learning and other skills development. We will provide time and teaching/learning resources for up to an additional 4-6 hours each week.

  • We will have weekly Zoom meetings for the research assistants to meet up and discuss their work, interests, and shared learning.  Later in the program participants will make presentations both to share the work, but also to practice presentation skills. 

  • Our PIs will also make presentations to the whole cohort so we can learn from not only your paired PI, but also from others.

  • Lastly, through the course of the summer, each research assistant will have the opportunity for a one-on-one mentoring session with Dr. Erik Alexander, Director of Medical Student Education at the Brigham and Women's Hospital to discuss his/her interests and goals.