Accomplishments and Events

2021 Goldwater Scholars

The Barry Goldwater scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation was established in 1986. By providing scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineeerin, the Goldwater Foundation is helping to ensure that the I.S. is producing the number of hihg- qualified professionals the Nation needs in these critical fields. For the 2021-2022 academic year, 410 college students fro across the United States were warded. From an estimed pool of over 5,000 collesge sophmores and juniors we would like to congrautlate the 7 students who are apart of the CPRIT CURE program.

Congratulations to: John Boom (Duke); Ann Marie Flusche (Univeristy of Tulsa; Carolina Guerrera (Dartmouth); Jordan Kramer (Georgetown) Qianyun (Lexi) Luo (Univesrity of Wisconsin-Madison); Jocelyn Mathew (University of Rochester); and Alexis Simmons (Baylor University)

Virtual Research Experience - Summer 2020

The CPRIT Research Training Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center congratulates our  2020 CPRIT CURE Summer Undergraduate Research Students. These 69 outstanding young scientists engaged in 10 weeks of cancer research remotely under the mentorship of our dedicated faculty mentors. In addition to research, they learned the fundamentals of cancer biology and participated in journal club and professional and career development enrichment activities. This year’s cohort was selected from more than 550 outstanding applicants from around the nation and world. 

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted many of the brightest undergraduate scientists of the next generation. Research laboratory closures and cancelled summer research programs left undergraduates minimal opportunities to gain the critical research experience needed to apply for graduate programs and develop as scientists. Based on our strong training program history and unwavering commitment to undergraduate research training, and supported by an outpouring of interest from our mentoring faculty and undergraduate scientists, CPRIT CURE Program leadership redesigned our summer program. This year, we provided quality research, mentoring, and enrichment activities for our 2020 cohort with a twist – it was accomplished 100% remotely. Our trainees were matched with research mentors across many diverse departments, and contributed to research at MD Anderson through projects covering many facets of cancer research, including D3CODE COVID-19 in Cancer projects.  We are grateful for the tremendous support from many institutional offices and our mentoring faculty, which allowed our program to re-emerge this summer as an innovative remote research program. We are also appreciative of funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) via our Research Training Award (RP170067), as well as the graduate school, which supported modest research scholarship awards for our trainees.

We are proud to continue leading efforts to fulfil MD Anderson and Program missions to provide quality research training to our undergraduates, despite COVID-19-related adversity. We are confident that the impactful research, mentorship, and training provided by our program during this unprecedented time will help to positively shape the lives of our young scientists and encourage them to pursue careers in cancer research.